Experiments on motion?

[Mr Rayon]

My class has spent several weeks on making a student designed practical experiment and unfortunately due to illness I have been away. Does anyone know of any good experiments that can be conducted in a classroom involving motion, particularly to prove the effect of safety features in cars? Or if not this, than just of any experiments involving motion? I haven't started at all and can't think of anything (complete mental blank), it seems as though physics is too demanding of a subject and impossible to apply the theory to practicals. Well, is anyone willing to prove me wrong? Anyone have any ideas?

[insane_alien]

egg drop immediately springs to mind.

 

you can show the difference between crumple zones and no crumple zones. or airbags. and it has lots of nice equations(acceleration *cough*) for you to go on about to keep your teacher happy (not much you can do to keep the janitor happy though, maybe clean up the worst of it yourself)

[timo]

It's not related to car safety. I also do not know what a "student" is; can be anything from younger than high-school to a PhD student.

 

Anyways, how about something like

http://www.myphysicslab.com/dbl_spring1.html

 

Note:

- An experimentally well-behaved alternative setup is to connect a 3rd spring on the right and fix it to a wall. Also, all interesting effects happen with springs with equal spring constant, too - a case that makes things a bit easier.

- The problem can be solved analytically (I do not remember the details atm, though); it's possible to compare the experimental results with analytical predictions. Either the full position(time) or velocity(time) or distance(time) data if you can measure them, or just the qualitative behavior (masses oscillating in phase, in opposite phases or a mixture).

- It might sound a bit boring but the math, and how it translates to reality, is somewhat interesting. Also, in the case you are actually interested in physics, understanding what an equation of motion is, what a solution is and what a starting condition is is quite a fundamental thing in physics beyond school level.

- The math is not too rough, but if you just need an experiment and don't want to bother learning stuff beyond high school level, then it's probably not a good idea.

[Mr Rayon]

It's not related to car safety. I also do not know what a "student" is; can be anything from younger than high-school to a PhD student.

 

 

I'm a high-school student. Anyone got any other bright ideas?