6th grade students spent Friday deepening their understanding of inclined planes, one of the simple machines introduced last class.  We jumped into two experiments that illustrated an inclined plane’s effect on speed, distance, time and effort.

Experiment #1: Wall v. Ramp!

Students had two backpacks loaded with books and were asked to raise them 8 feet and 3 inches.  The first attempt required lifting the bag straight up a wall from the roof of the school!  Though the bag didn’t have far to travel, it was really difficult to lift and required 3-4 students to manage the job.  The second attempt involved using the ramp from the teacher lounge to the art studio.  Students calculated the ramp to be 33 ft long, raising the bag 8’3″ vertically.  Students computed the angle of the ramp to be approximately 13 degrees using a giant protractor.  The ramp was much easier to pull books up, but there was more distance required.

Experiment #2: Race Cars!

Students used a lunch table, stop watch and protractor to capture the amount of time required for a matchbox car to travel from one end of a ramp to the other.  They recorded 3 trials each for angles of 10 degrees, 20, degrees, 30 degrees, etc all the way up to 90 degrees.  After isolating the median speed for each angle, we noted a correlation that was consistent with our initial hypothesis: the steeper the angle, the faster the car went and the less time it took for the car to reach the bottom.