Power of a Gas Powered remote control car up different inclines
The power of an object is defined as the rate at which work is done or as the rate in which energy is transformed. The concept of power is frequently used when it comes to vehicles. A car needs power the most when it is climbing hills and when it is accelerating. When a car or lets say a gas powered remote control car goes up different angled inclines how is the power of the vehicle affected or is it even affected at all?
The purpose of this lab is to compare the power output of a certain gas powered remote control car and the incline in which it is climbing. Finding the power of a object is quite simple, the power of a object going up some unknown incline is given by
Power = energy transformed/ Time = Kinetic energy + Potential energy / Time = (½ mv2 + mgh )/ time
another formula that will be used is Velocity = Distance / time to find the velocity of the car.
It is hypothesized that the power output of the gas powered truck will increase as the angle of the incline increases.
The first thing you need to do is to build a ramp that can be raised and lowered to different heights that correspond to different angles of incline. A diagram of this ramp is shown below:
In order to set the ramp at different set angles you have to calculate the height that the elevated end must be at. To calculate the different heights at specific angles you use Sin q = opposite / hypotenuse .
Once you have your ramp and your working vehicle you are ready to take your data. To take the data, time the vehicle going up the ramp at each specific angle. Time the vehicle several times on each angle in order to improve the accuracy of the time. Once you have your times, you are ready to analyze the times and begin calculating the power output of the truck.
Accoording to the data and the graph, the power output of the truck increases as the the angle of incline increases. But then when the angle gets higher the power output begins to level out and it doesn't increase at the same rate as the lower angles. This decrease in power at the steeper angles can probably be attributed to traction loss, in the high angles the truck would lose traction and peel out much of the way up the incline wasting power. Another possible reason why the power decreases is that the engine can only put out so much power and it might be coming close to that maxium power output.
There is a large amount of uncertainty in this experiment. First of all the biggest cause of uncertainty is from the small gas powered engine that propells the truck. This engine is inconsistant and its performance varies. Another cause of uncertainty is from timing errors, it is hard to get exact times when just watching the truck go up the incline. Third of all there are factors like traction that come in to play, as the angle of incline increased the amount of traction decreased resulting in slower times and loss of power. All of these factors change the results of this experiment. If these problems were to be solved then the accuracy of the experiment would improve and it would give a better picture of the true results.
The results I got from doing this experiment confirmed my hypothesis. I hypothesised that the power of the truck would increase as the angle of the incline increased and according to the data it is correct. But if the data continued to even steeper angles then I believe it would eventually come to a peak or limit when it reaches the engines maximum power output.