Science

***- proficiencies #1 and #2 are the same but the write up explaining the answers to the questions are very different.

Proficiency #1

Problem: How does the amount of weight on a hockey puck affect the distance it goes on an air hockey table while it's on?

Hypothesis: I think that the minimum amount of weight will work best because then there is less weight pushing down so it will move smoother across the table

Experiment:
CV- Air hockey table, hockey puck, pencil on table, clean hockey table, minimum spinning
IV- Weight on puck
DV- The distance the hockey puck moves

External Variables
I plan on eliminating external variables here by not touching anything, and by cleaning the table before each experiment so I get the most accurate results possible.
Procedure:

1. gather supplies
2. create desired path of puck
3. clean air hockey table
4. turn hockey table on
5. clean puck
6. place 1/2 of an eraser on the hockey puck
7. place puck on table and roll it across it
8. record how far the puck went
9. do steps 7-8 four more times cleaning everything between each trial
10. do steps 6-9 using the rest of the weights
11. conclude
12. clean up

Results:

Conclusion:
After testing this problem I have found that my hypothesis was totally correct with the puck with no weight going 30 inches farther on average than the next closest puck. This was true because the creators of the hockey table had this in mind when they were making the table so it wouldn't release more air than needed. The only problem I had with this experiment was the fact that I forgor to clean in between each trial so that may have affected the results but, I did clean it the first time which was crucial because it was going to be vary dirty at the beginning from all the dust in the basement. 

Write-up:
Newton’s laws of motion apply to everyday life in many ways, for instance, they are called the laws of motion so that’s self explanatory. But also Newton’s first law applies to the real world like in my experiment and how the puck doesn’t move until I hit it or how it doesn’t stop until the friction being created on the table does so. The second law applies in my experiment by how I change the weight on the hockey puck it affects the distance it goes, another way to think about it would be if you were to think about it, if you hit a baseball with a baseball bat with the same force as a bowling ball, we could assume that the baseball would go significantly farther than the bowling ball because of the difference in mass. Newton’s third law applies when the hockey puck bounces off of the wall of the table you at first don’t think anything happened but an opposite reaction did happen because when the puck hit the table it created noise.

Proficiency #2

Problem: How does the amount of weight on a hockey puck affect the distance it goes on an air hockey table while it's on?

Hypothesis: I think that the minimum amount of weight will work best because then there is less weight pushing down so it will move smoother across the table

Experiment:
CV- Air hockey table, hockey puck, pencil on table, clean hockey table, minimum spinning
IV- Weight on puck
DV- The distance the hockey puck moves

External Variables:
I plan on eliminating external variables here by not touching anything, and by cleaning the table before each experiment so I get the most accurate results possible.

Procedure:

1. gather supplies
2. create desired path of puck
3. clean air hockey table
4. turn hockey table on
5. clean puck
6. place 1/2 of an eraser on the hockey puck
7. place puck on table and roll it across it
8. record how far the puck went
9. do steps 7-8 four more times cleaning everything between each trial
10. do steps 6-9 using the rest of the weights
11. conclude
12. clean up

Results:
 

Conclusion
After testing this problem I have found that my hypothesis was totally correct with the puck with no weight going 30 inches farther than than the next closest puck. This was true because the creators of the hockey table had this in mind when they were making the table so it wouldn't release more air than needed. The only problem I had with this experiment was the fact that I forgor to clean in between each trial so that may have affected the results but, I did clean it the first time which was crucial because it was going to be vary dirty at the beginning from all the dust in the basement.Conclusion:

Write-up:
Friction and gravity apply to Newton’s 3^rd law in the way that when something slides across the floor gravity pushes the box creating friction which slows it down much like how the hockey puck had to slow down in my experiment. Friction and gravity really doesn’t apply to the 2^nd law but it’s basically the entire basis of the 1^st one. It is because it says that an object in motion will remain in motion until an unbalanced force acts upon it which usually is friction which is caused by gravity 

Proficiency #3

Problem: What type of ball will accelerate quicker down a ramp when hit?

Hypothesis: I think that the heaviest ball will accelerate the quickest because it has more weight to move forward

Experiment:
CV- ramp, ramp position, amount of force hitting it, spot where the ball is hit
IV- the weight of the ball
DV- How fast the ball accelerates

External Variables
I plan on eliminating external variables in many ways, for one the only thing I will be touching nothing that does not need to be moved in the first place so nothing gets messed up, and I will be the only one throwing the puck so the amount of force stays the same.


Procedure:
1. gather materials
2. set up excel
3. set up station
4. take lightest ball and place on ramp
5. then realese the ball and start the timer simultaneously
6. when the ball reaches the desired distance, stop timer
7. record results
8. repeat steps 4-7 4 more times
9. repeat steps 4-8 using the other two golf balls
10. conclude
11. clean up

Results:

Conclusion:
After testing i have found that my hypothesis was incorrect but halfway through the experiment I realized that the only factors that was actually changing the outcome was human error. You might say that the 20 in. distance was best but this is not true because gravity pushes down on all objects equally so my results would not change so it didn't matter what I did wrong on my experiment and what I did right.
Write-up:
Speed and acceleration are related in the way that if one goes up the other goes up, if one goes down the other goes down. This is true because of the formula to find acceleration has two aspects of speed in it. On argument to this would be that my test results showed that a medium amount of distance shows the greatest acceleration but I think that that the results are close enough to show that there was human error involved because its nearly impossible to get the exact number every time plus the stop watch only went to one digit pas zero so the watch itself wasn’t very accurate.
Proficiency #4

Our Rube Goldberg strats by throwing a puck on air hockey table moving across it, this is where the energy starts. The puck has pencil attached to it so when it reaches the end it hits a set of dominoes which go down an inclined plane and hits a golf ball on a tee. The ball then  rolls down a ramp which his a high mechanical advantage so the ball speeds up and bounces off a wall, the ball eventually makes its way over to another set of dominoes which leads up a ramp which decreases the speed due to a low mechanical advantage but they still have enough force to hit a car which drives down a ramp regaing the speed just lost and then hits very large dominoes. As the large dominoes slowly fall they are going uphill but we only need a littly amount of force to knock the ball down so it doesn't matter. finally the golf ball rolls down a ramp into a hole. So in the end the only power that was created was a little force to push an air hockey puck which moves about 30 feet in an overcomplicated process to do one simple thing which is the exact reason of a Rube Goldberg.

Proficiency #5

Hydropower essay

            For over 200 years coal has been our main energy source, but is it really the best? Scientists have found alternate forms of energy like wind power, or solar energy, but both of those cost too much to put up with little energy that we get back from. But there is a viable energy source that is both safe for the environment and the machines that get it are efficient enough to get a large amount of energy so we actually get a profit that doesn’t take 50 years.

            Hydropower is by far the most efficient energy source getting up to 90% of possible power from the water, plus it is the most cost effective. Last year the United States produced 250 Billion kilowatt hours, if this was all hydropower it would cost about $200,000,000,000.00 whereas coal production would cost about $937,500,000,000.00. So anyone can tell that it saves a lot of money to use hydropower energy instead of coal.

            Even though some people would say that coal produces more energy this is not true, of the dams in the U.S. just 2% of the water that goes through is used for hydroelectricity and they still reach the numbers that they get, if we were to use at least 15% for hydroelectricity the results could be astronomical. Some countries have already learned the power of hydroelectricity, in New Zealand 75% of their electricity come from hydropower and in Norway a whopping 99% comes from hydropower showing just how great this energy source can be.

            Hopefully after reading this it would persuade you to do something about it like sending a letter to Pewaukee about building a generator in the new dam or something along those lines