Problems/ Solutions

Problems:

After finishing our first model, as modeled by our video, we encountered several problems with our problem. The biggest problem of course was the car not being able to roll freely with the force of gravity down a slanted surface. When observing the potential places of errors it was concluded that their was a problem with our wheels: both on the contact with the ground and axle. The error with the constant with the down was that their was too much friction between the dowel and axle since because when lifted up and spinner with an initial force, the wheels would quickly stop which shows a strong force of friction, this would attribute to a high rolling kinetic friction. The contact with the road was also a problem because when tested out on a very step slope, the car stayed at equilibrium, which means there was a high rolling static friction. 

Approach to solve the problems:

To fix the problem of a high static friction we increased the radius of the wheels. This allowed us to decrease static friction because as the wheel radius increase you get closer to a more perfect flat contact with the surface (the earth is characterized as a sphere, but because of its huge radius we perceive the surface as flat). This flat contact means less resistance which intern leads to lower friction.