During our science topic, we have been learning about forces and how the force of friction occurs between two surfaces that move against each other. The children made moving cars using a cuboid net, straws, dowels and milk bottle lids.
When the cars were finished, we used them to carry out an investigation to answer the question: Which surface allows a car to travel the furthest?
We carried out our test on a range of different surfaces; grass, the playground, the cloak room carpet, a table and the classroom carpet. We made predictions to say which surface we thought the car would travel the furthest on and we ensured that we kept the ramp, person releasing the car and where the measurement started from the same to make it a fair test.
We tested each surface three times. Then we measured the distance they travelled on the different surfaces and recorded our results in a table.
After our investigation, we looked at our results table and wrote a conclusion. We found that the car travelled furthest on the table. We also found that the car travelled the least distance on the cloak room carpet. This is because the table was smoother than the cloak room carpet and therefore created less friction.
