We finally had a sunny, beautiful day to conduct part of our experiment outside! Yay! Or course our scientists were over the moon. To start things out, we discussed some of the forces that play a key role in soccer: the force of gravity which is constantly pulling the ball downwards towards the Earth, and the force of air resistance which is the force of air pushing against a moving object. We also talked about how having the best kick possible requires human force and energy and depends on the human component "time of reaction" which is how long it takes a human to develop a response to a stimuli. Before getting outside and collecting data on velocity of the soccer ball after kick we gathered some data inside that could be crucial to the experiment: the mass of the ball, the circumference of the ball (because we also discussed how the direction of the ball is determined by where the foot hits the ball during the kick) and time of reaction (the human component).
Once we gathered this important data we headed outside to figure out the ball's velocity and how the velocity may change due to the forces discussed and the time of reaction factor. A meter stick was used to measure the distance of how far the ball was kicked. Velocity was then calculated using the formula: v = d ,
t
in which v stands for velocity, d is distance in meters, and t is time.
Once all data was gathered we went back inside and analyzed the velocities recorded, indeed the human component of time of reaction plays a key role to become the best athlete possible. And then of course the question then becomes, can time of reaction be improved? Another science quest for the young scientists!
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