The Experiment
This experiment is based on a similar experiment by Tinker Lab.
Materials:
marble or ping pong ball
Paper towel or toilet paper cardboard tubes
lots of painters tape
scissors
cup
plastic spoons, wooden blocks, almost anything else you can think of!
Paper towel or toilet paper cardboard tubes
lots of painters tape
scissors
cup
plastic spoons, wooden blocks, almost anything else you can think of!
Try it out:
- Cut some cardboard tubes in half lengthwise. These will be the tracks for the marble.
- Tape the tubes to the wall in different patterns, going from up to down. Try slanting them up and down, or putting them far apart or close together. Put a cup under the lowest tube.
- Try adding different pieces to your marble run, like plastic spoons for the marble to bounce off of or pieces of cardboard to make it slow down.
- When you drop the marble, can you get it to roll, bounce, and slide its way into the cup at the bottom?
- Try building a few different marble runs. Which one is the fastest? Which one can move the marble the farthest?
What's happening
A marble run is a kind of Rube Goldberg machine: a machine that does something simple in a very complicated way. Your marble run is doing something simple, putting a marble in a cup, but it takes a lot of steps to get there.
What makes the marble move? The force of gravity pulls the marble downward, so if the tubes slant even a little bit downward, gravity will make the marbles move. If you tried to make the marble go up again, it wouldn't be able to go very far. You can think of it like climbing a hill. It takes more energy to climb up than go down.
The more you slant the tubes down, the faster the marbles will move. When a marble is at the top of a tube, it has a lot of potential energy because it can move when you let it go but it's not moving yet. Since it has the potential to move, it has potential energy. When the marble starts moving faster and faster as it goes down, the potential energy turns into kinetic energy. No matter how fast or slow the marble is moving, the total energy is the same. This is called the Law of Conservation of energy.
What makes the marble move? The force of gravity pulls the marble downward, so if the tubes slant even a little bit downward, gravity will make the marbles move. If you tried to make the marble go up again, it wouldn't be able to go very far. You can think of it like climbing a hill. It takes more energy to climb up than go down.
The more you slant the tubes down, the faster the marbles will move. When a marble is at the top of a tube, it has a lot of potential energy because it can move when you let it go but it's not moving yet. Since it has the potential to move, it has potential energy. When the marble starts moving faster and faster as it goes down, the potential energy turns into kinetic energy. No matter how fast or slow the marble is moving, the total energy is the same. This is called the Law of Conservation of energy.
If you thought this was cool...
This experiment is related to mechanical engineering. You can find out more here.
Some ideas from physics in this experiment include kinetics, forces, and energy. If you want to find out more about the different kinds of energy, check out this link.
Some ideas from physics in this experiment include kinetics, forces, and energy. If you want to find out more about the different kinds of energy, check out this link.
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