Friction and Shoe Slide

|Name: Brennan Gedney |Date: November 16, 2011 | Graded Assignment Lab Report Answer the questions, using complete sentences. When you have finished, submit this assignment to your teacher by the due date for full credit. (9 points) |Score | | | 1. In Part 1, did the force of friction on the shoe depend on the weight of the shoe? If the two are related, why are they? What does the slope of the line on the graph of force of friction vs. eight represent? Explain using your data. Answer: The frictional force did depend on the weight of the shoe. The more mass a shoe had, the large frictional force was required. The more weight a shoe has, the more gravity pulls on the shoe. This means that there is a larger normal force, which multiplied by the same coefficient of friction gives a larger frictional force. The slope of the line of friction vs. weight represents the rate at which the frictional force increases due to weight. (8 points) |Score | | | 2. Does an athletic shoe work better on a basketball court than a dress or dance shoe? Why or why not? Explain using data from Parts 1 and 2. Answer: An athletic shoe does not work better than a dress shoe on a basketball court. Athletic shoes have more grip than dress shoes, and thus require more force to move. Based on my data, the dress shoe requires less applied force to move than an athletic shoe. (8 points) |Score | | | 3. If you wanted the athletic shoe to slide faster on a surface, what might you do to the shoe? Provide at least two ways to make the shoe slide faster, and explain in terms of the force of friction and the coefficient of friction. Answer: To make a shoe slide faster, you might decrease the weight of the shoe. This would decrease the normal force, and thus the force of friction, allowing the shoe to slide faster. Another way to slide the shoe faster would be to slide it down an inclined plane. This would decrease the coefficient of static friction because the angle used in  µs = tan ? would be smaller. |Your Score |___ of 25 |