Buggy Lab

I thought this was kind of a weird lab because we got some odd results for our second scenario.

In the first scenario, we started the buggy car at the reference point and counted how many centimeters for every 5 seconds that the buggy car ran.

This first scenario was pretty easy. Our results gave us a direct, linear graph.

Although in the second scenario, we moved our buggy car back 40 cm behind the reference point. We still counted how many centimeters away from the reference point for every 5 seconds that the buggy car ran.

This is where the results get funky. Our graph is like an absolute value. My group decided on this graph because a position cannot be a negative distance away from the reference point. So for those who don’t know, the graph would look kind of like a linear line and then flipping the negative half of the line over the x-axis to make a “V” shape.

In our graphs, the x-axis was the reference point. Whether at the origin or somewhere along the x-axis, that point where the line touches the x-axis always represents the reference point.