Sixth Grade Physics

Hello Families!

We have had an excellent week back from winter vacation!  Prior to winter vacation we started a unit in physics, and are now wrapping that unit up.  As part of our physics unit we have focused on different forces, and how an object's acceleration, mass, and friction coefficient affect its motion.  Currently we are working on a lab report from a friction lab we ran all last week. 

Calculating the mass of the object was a critical step, adding steel washers allowed for the mass to be an independent variable.

Students tested the static friction of a wood block by attaching a force meter and reading a force meter.

Each team tested various surface types

Students collecting data.

Following data collection, each student averaged the static force, and determined the coefficient of friction for each mass and each surface type.

In addition, we replicated the results of a Mythbusters experiment titled 'Phonebook Friction.'  For this demonstration we interleaved the pages of two phonebooks, attached bindings to the opposite spines of the books, and had a class tug-of-war to see if the strength of the entire class could pull the two books apart.  Well... we tried, but in the end the score of this event was Friction 1, Class 0.

The only thing holding the two phonebooks together is the friction between each interleaved page.

As can be seen, the force of static friction between the two books was greater than the net pulling force of the class!