7 May 2019
Gravitational potential energy is energy an object possesses because of its position in a gravitational field.
3 Things Learnt:
When the force and the displacement are in the same direction, the acceleration will be zero.
The example done in class was sliding 2 marbles down a ramp, both the same distance, but one had a shorter ramp and one had a longer one. What I learnt here was that firstly, when the marbles were on top of the ramp, they had gravitational potential energy. Any object has a gravitational potential energy. Then, as an object travels, it’s potential energy changes into kinetic energy, as happened with the marbles. The question was which one would reach the end of the tracks first, and after experimenting, I learnt it was the one with the shorter ramp, because since it’s ramp was shorter, it would reach it’s highest kinetic energy at a faster rate than the marble on the longer ramp, and since it reached max velocity faster, it would reach the end of the tracks faster.
When determining the velocity and kinetic energy, the mass didn’t matter. When one of the marbles was switched to one of a higher mass (the one on the longer ramp), the question was, would there be any change as to which ball reaches first now. Though the one with higher mass would have a higher potential energy, but that does not affect the situation. The one that reached first was still the one with the shorter ramp, not the one with the higher potential energy. This shows that mass has no effect on how fast an object reaches it’s max kinetic energy.
Questions:
Is there ANY situation where the mass would have even the slightest bit of effect?
How much affect does friction have in this case?
After Unit Reflection: In this post, I investigated energy transformations and the law of conservation of energy. When the ball was slid down the ramp, it’s potential energy converted into kinetic energy, and this transformation was investigated for 2 different sets of marbles. This also showed the law of conservation of energy, as the energy was converted, not lost or created, as the marble went down the ramp.
After Unit Reflection: In this post, I also demonstrated an understanding of gravitational potential energy. I described the term, and showed that the marbles, before being slid down, had gravitational potential energy, as all other objects do. I also explained that this gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy as an object moves.
Energy E Blog 