🚚 Toy car weight and distance: the whole packet

🚚 Toy car weight and distance · 3rd–7th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 45 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change how much weight is on the car, then how far the car rolls will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

4 levels × 3 tries at each = 12 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🚗 A toy car
• 📚 Some books: 2, about the same thickness
• 📦 Flat cardboard: a long flat piece, about 60 cm
• 🪙 Pennies: 20
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler
• 🩹 Tape

Be safe: 👶 Small parts

1. Lean the cardboard on two books to make a ramp on a hard floor.
2. Put a strip of masking tape across the ramp near the top: that's your start line.
3. Put the car's front wheels on the line and let go. Don't push!
4. When it stops, measure from the bottom of the ramp to the front of the car.
5. Write the number in your table, then do two more tries with the plain car.
6. Tape a stack of 5 pennies on the middle of the car's roof, and do three tries.
7. Add 5 more pennies to make 10, and do three tries.
8. Add 10 more pennies to make 20, and do three tries.
9. Find the mean for each weight and draw a line graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Pennies on the car   I measured: how far the car rolls (cm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: pennies on the car along the bottom, cm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: run the plain car and the 20-penny car down a 1-book, 2-book and 3-book ramp, and draw a line for each car.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a heavier toy car roll farther?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how much weight is on the car would change how far the car rolls, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how much weight is on the car (0 pennies, 5 pennies, 10 pennies, 20 pennies) and measured how far the car rolls in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same car and the same ramp, 2 books high the same, so only how much weight is on the car was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 4 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: 0 pennies and 20 pennies gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: run the plain car and the 20-penny car down a 1-book, 2-book and 3-book ramp, and draw a line for each car.