fairfolio
Saved Projects

The Impact of Weight and Surface Area on Static Friction

CSEF · 2016 Physics & Astronomy

William P. Edwards · El Tejon Middle School, Lebec, Kern County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective is to determine whether weight or surface area has more of an impact on static friction. Methods/Materials I determined the static friction force between an object and a surface using an adjustable inclined plane setup. I used 4 object surface areas of the same material, 5 weights per object, and 2 surface materials for a total of 40 test cases. Each test case was repeated for 5 trials. Results Objects with different surface areas and weights were tested on an adjustable inclined plane to find their static friction force. The static friction force between the object and the surface is impacted by weight but not surface area. Conclusions/Discussion My 40 test cases showed that weight did effect friction force, but surface area had no significant impact. From this I concluded that weight impacts static friction force, but surface area does not.

Summary statement

My data showed that the static friction force between 2 materials is dependent on weight, but not on surface area.

Help received

I did all of the research, testing, analysis, and documentation. My dad helped me obtain the materials and build the inclined plane setup.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2016 Physics & Astronomy · Entry J1706

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google