Forces and Motion- Marble Motion

  Have you ever wondered if gravity, compression, pressure and more can be used in different ways? Well, yes they can, for example the same thing we did with partners in my science class. Me and my partner Maryam were assigned to do a little lab to be able to answer some questions about forces and motion. The materials needed were these:
Straw/Different types of Marbles, Measuring stick and a tray.
Our procedure was:
1. Pick 4 marbles you want to work with
2. Pick a table to work on and label it with start and finish line
3. Get a straw for each partner
4. Place the first marble on the srating line and blow
5. Decide how to blow: Hard/Normal
6. Record how the marble traveled
7. Repeat from step 4-6 for every marble
As we started working, we did every step needed and now our teacher provided us with question we had to be able to answer once we finished:
Does the mass of a marble affect how it moves?
When given a force, (in this case blowing from the straw) what happenes to its motion?
Does size affect motion?
Before we could even think about answering those questions, we had to draw a graph and show how the marbles traveled, and not to forget the table with our recordings in it.
This was our graph:

We pretty much recorded everything we needed. Everyone had a different graph, and I think that we included everything and the most important things were mentioned.Once we finished creating this graph, came our drawings showing how much force was applied to every marble and how it traveled.

This picture may not be as clear, but it shows the 4 different path the marbles went. Next to the graphs, you may notice some green arrows showing how much force was applied. The marble and steel ball were pretty easy to blow at and make move, but while my partner and I were testing the Golf ball, extra force was applied because it was harder to make move. On the other hand, the Styrofoam ball was acctually pretty easy to make move except for the fact that it would always fall of the table so we would have to always retry unitl we could get an actual answer. That was all we needed to do to be able to proceed to our conclusion.

This is where we had to answer questions, so does the mass of a marble affect how it moves?
My partner and I didn't really focus on the mass that much, so I am not 100% which marble was the heaviest and which was the lightest, but I am guessing that the golf ball was the heavies one, and if I am correct, then yes the mass may affect the way a marble moves or how it is moved. While we were blowing into the golf ball, since it is the one that appears to weight the most, we had to use extra much of an amount of force. If we used the same amount of force to move the golf ball as we did with the marble, we wouldn't have succeeded.  Answering this question, brings me to an other question, does the size of the marble affect the way it is being hit by the motion? Well, in my opinion it does because in a way, this refers to mass even thought sometimes bigger balls weigh less than some smaller ones. Back to the characteristics of marbles, here comes an other question to my mind, does the material of the marble affect the way it goes in motion? I don't think this is a major affect, because the force (blow) doesn't really feel the material of the marble.

When given a force, (in this case blowing from the straw) what happenes to its motion?
 While applied a force to the marble, it starts setting it self into motion. How do we know the marble is moving and our eyes are not fooling us? This is why a reference point exists. A reference point is a point to which we refer to see if the object is moving. We can say that the object is moving if it is changing the distance in any way from its reference point.While doing this little project, the way we blew, so applied the force, was very important and affected the way the marbles went. We started out with blowing at the Styrofoam ball, our first trial, we blew from the bottom of the ball which didn't help at all because the forces weren't getting to the ball. On the other balls, we tried to hit with the force in the middle of ball so it would go straight but i guess how much force was applied was also something that affected the results. So after all, when given a force, the object will be get into some type of motion and react to what ever just happened in different ways.

Further Inquiry:
To end up this glob post, I must say that my partner and I did make some mistakes such as: blow from under the ball which affected our results at first. Also, if we would do this type of project next time, I think we should have focused a bit more on the mass of the marbles because we didn't really find that as interesting and maybe also measure how far the marbles traveled. But rather than that, I think we did a good job and can honestly say I understand this!