Science+Lab

Question: How does changing the height that the marble is dropped from effect the diameter of a crater? Hypothesis: If we drop the marble from 30 cm, then it should make the biggest crater because it will hit the sand with more force. Table & graph Analysis: How did the speed of the marbles effect the size of the craters? The faster the marbles are going, the further they go into the sand and they displace more sand, so the craters are larger. Like if you drop the marble from 30 cm, the average crater diameter is 5 1/3 cm, but if you drop it from 10 cm, the average crater size is 1 2/3 cm. Conclusion: Our hypothesis was correct. When we dropped the marble from 30 cm, we got the largest crater. It was, on average, a 5 1/3 cm crater. When we dropped it from 20 cm, it was only about an average of 4.5 cm craters. The drop from 10 cm averages a 3 2/3 cm crater, which is much smaller that the drop from 30 cm. Our results may have been effected by the fact that we all dropped the marble differently. For example, I started the marble off so that the bottom was at the height we were dropping it from, but other people in my group would either put the top of middle at that point. How could the diameter of the marble effect the crater size?