Land Yatch | Science

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, for the past few weeks in science we have been working on a new unit called "Forces and Motion". Recently we built a land yacht to test out how fast it could do by using a formula where we calculate the speed. 

Aim: Our goal was to find out how to make our land yacht faster. 

Method+Equipment: 

- Cart

- Sticks (of any size)

- Strings 

- Plastic or anything that can be blown into.

- Leaf Blower 

Using a leaf blower, blow towards your land yacht at a reasonable distance and continue to move forward as the land yacht travels forwards, then stop only when you have reached where your land yacht started. Then measure the distance. (Start the time once the leaf blower is on, then decide on when you want to stop your time.) 

Result:

Our distance was 4.5m and our time was 7.3s. We had to use a formula to calculate the speed of our land yacht 

Calculating Speed:

v= d/t 

v (speed) = d (distance) ÷ t (time)

Conclusion:

Our final speed was 0.61m/s-1. 

Aerodynamics 

Wind tunnels: Wind tunnels are used by scientists to help them see the flow of air the travels over an object. Stream of smoke can be used to make the flow of air visible. 

Down Force: As air coming from the wind tunnels move down the rear wing of a car it produces something called downforce. This helps the car maintain speed when going around at high speeds.