Hira Sadiq 12/18/2013 Green(1)

The Arc Lab Report

Question:
What type of wheels will help the racecar go the fastest? Wood, Skateboard, Long board, Cruiser?

Hypothesis:
My partner and I predicted that the long board wheels would help the vehicle travel the fastest. We expressed that the long board wheels would be best because due to their size, they would cover more ground than the other wheels, and due to the smooth covering around it, it would help the car go faster and cover more ground per second.

Materials:
2 longboard wheels 2 skateboard wheels 2 cruiser wheels 2 wooden wheels 4 wooden dowels 12 skateboard bearings

 Downward angled ramp to roll wheels down Timer/stopwatch

Procedure:
1. Start out with one type of wheel and roll it down one at time while timing the results. Record the time. 2. Race a wooden wheel vs. a skateboard wheel (at least two or three times) and record the winner. 3. Race a longboard wheel vs. a cruiser wheel (at least two or three times) and record the winner. 4. Race a cruiser wheel vs. a wooden wheel (at least two or three times) and record the winner. 5. Race a longboard wheel vs. a wooden wheel (at least two or three times) and record the winner. 6. Place the bearings inside of all the wheels that need bearings (all of them with the exception of the wooden wheels). 7. Push the wooden dowel (used as an axle) through the hole in the bearings (in the wheels) and separate the wheels an equal space apart, stopping it with a spacer. 8. Roll each pair of wheels with its axle(the dowel) down the ramp one at a time and record the time each pair of wheels received.

Data:
Wheel Type Longboard Skateboard Cruiser Wood Mass of 1 wheel 149.5 grams 75.9 grams 103.3 grams 10.1 grams Time w/ axle 1.51 seconds 1.93 seconds 1.55 seconds 1.68 seconds Time w/o axle 1.58 seconds 1.93 seconds 1.48 seconds 1.8 seconds

Wheel races
Wooden vs. Skateboard Wooden vs. Skateboard Cruiser vs. Wooden Cruiser vs. Wooden

_______= winner

Longboard vs. Cruiser Longboard vs. Cruiser Longboard vs. Wooden Longboard vs. Wooden

Analysis: Our data reveals that the long board and cruiser wheels
were the fastest through the experiments. Although the long board holds more mass and size, they seemed to travel faster when attached with a dowel and there were two wheels instead of one. The cruiser

wheels proved to go quicker individually with and without an axle. We decided to use both wheels as opposed to one set or the other. Combining the speed of the cruiser and the agile, consistent time for the long board wheels would improve our results.

Conclusion:
Due to the results from the experiments, we concluded that using long board wheels in the back and cruiser wheels in the front would assist with speed and durability. However, there may have been a few errors present, which resulted in one of the two becoming faster when placed together with a wooden dowel. A human error that could have caused the cruiser wheels to speed faster was that my partner and I used a stopwatch on our cellphone to record the time so starting and stopping the time could be a few milliseconds off. Also, a mechanical error that could be present was that the wheels would roll off the ramp sometimes and in other cases, veer more to the left or veer more to the right. Even if, according to the data, the cruiser wheel traveled faster, my partner and I can conclude that we will use the longboard wheels for our experiment because they traveled faster with an axle, which is more relevant to the experiment since we arent just rolling wheels. Our hypothesis was neither correct nor incorrect because we did say that

the long board wheels would travel faster and the long board and the cruiser wheels were easily tied in speed and ground. Another way to experiment was that we could have formed small boxes out of cardboard and attached a wooden dowel and tested each pairs of wheels per car. Our data would be more accurate and we would be able to have reliable outcomes.