Essay Example on My research has stated that the size of the Marble

My research has stated that the size of the marble must be somewhat close to the size of the magnet otherwise the energy would not be transferred enough to cause a launch This has also been proven because in my experiment the large magnets were unable to transfer kinetic energy and accelerate This is because the size of the steel ball bearings affects the ability for them to accelerate because of Newton's Second Law which states F m a In the equation F is the force m is the mass of the ball bearing and a is the acceleration Since it is an inverse relationship if mass increases acceleration will decrease Hence at one point the acceleration would not be sufficient enough to move the steel ball Another factor that affects the average velocity of the balls on the accelerator is the number of magnets known as stages along the track By adding more stages to the track the speed of the ball increases theoretically speaking 

As a steel ball approaches the magnet's magnetic field it gains kinetic energy because the magnet is exerting a pulling force on the ball due to its magnetic field Adding more stages along the track increases the kinetic energy at each magnet interaction resulting in a higher average velocity through the entirety of the 100 cm track There is eventually a limit for how fast the steel ball bearings could physically reach but this limit would be impossible to approach seeing as the resources are not yet available to conduct such an experiment to get even relatively close to the maximum Reason being is that at such a high velocity the magnet would crack upon contact I also experienced my magnets chipping due to a high velocity of some trails miniscience com Spacing also affects the speed of the steal ball bearings In my experiment I calculated the equal distance to ensure that all the stages were equally spaced Each magnet has a magnetic field that reaches up to a certain point before its pull would not affect the steel ball The force of the magnetic field can be calculated using the following equation F 1 d 2 In the equation F is the force of the magnetic field and d is the distance from the magnet The steel ball bearings have a minimum distance required after being launched from the previous magnet to reach its maximum potential velocity between magnets 

Sometimes however I noticed if the gap was too big due to friction the ball would be unable to go the length of the track McDonald The number of stages directly affects the amount of kinetic energy the steel ball bearings have The equation to find an object's kinetic energy is as follows KE 1 2 m v 2 Each time a steel ball bearing approached a new stage the magnetic pull from the magnet worked on the steel ball bearing causing the ball to accelerate toward the magnet However the collision is inelastic because some energy in the system is being lost to sound and heat from friction meaning the kinetic energy is constantly changing throughout the system Even though not all kinetic energy is maintained momentum is still conserved due to the law of conservation of momentum Acceleration is always in the direction that work is being done so the following equation can be used to find the sum of the work done W ΔKE The sum of the work is equal to the change in kinetic energy 

When the magnet pulls on the approaching steel ball bearing it is increasing the ball bearing s velocity and therefore is doing positive work This means the sum of the work being done is positive so acceleration is increasing Acceleration has a direct relationship to velocity meaning as acceleration increases so does velocity and therefore kinetic energy which is a direct effect of the dependent variable measured velocity In order to maintain consistency in the initial kinetic energy the initial velocity was kept constant between each trial as suggested by professional contact Each time another stage was added the steel ball bearing had more opportunities to accelerate therefore it makes sense that a higher number of stages would produce significantly higher velocities as the results showed This is also consistent with previous research regarding number of stages American Association of Physics Teachers The effect of number of steel ball bearings was also significant By adding more steel ball bearings to each stage the distance between the final ball at the stage and the magnet increased Even when the steel ball bearings were not directly attached to the neodymium magnets as in there were other steel ball bearings between it and the magnet the balls still felt a magnetic pull from the magnet This is shown by the magnets not rolling away as well as I felt the attraction of each ball bearing to the magnet it was close to This is because each magnet has a magnetic field that stretches to a certain distance away from it The pull of the magnet is inversely proportional to the distance the ball bearing is from it Therefore as the distance increases the pull of the magnet upon the ball bearing decreases This makes sense because the farther apart two magnets are the easier it is to keep them from re attaching to one another However the pull force may