Hovercraft Lab!

Personally I did not ride on the hovercraft, but from what I observed the constant speed in which the hovercraft moved in was interesting! From what other people said, it felt weird. The constant state of motion and lack of control of the speed and direction are foreign to us. We, humans, are always in control of our speed and direction, always accelerating or negatively accelerating. Even just the concept of the continuous motion that the hovercraft will remain in without a force to stop it is hard to grasp. Since we live on Earth with gravity, the average human does not experience what it is like to be in motion continuously and constantly.

The hovercraft explained a lot of things. With inertia the hovercraft was able to remain in a constant motion until someone forced it to stop. The net force that was applied to the craft was the force that put the craft into it's state of constant motion. When the hovercraft was in it's constant state of motion there was an equilibrium of no force which allowed the craft to remain in it's constant state of motion.

Acceleration depends on the net force that someone applies to the object that they are trying to move. An object with a small mass pushed with an average amount of force with cause it to accelerate more then an abject with a larger mass would. The smaller the mass, the greater the acceleration. The larger the mass, the lesser the acceleration.

In this lab, the constant velocity appeared in Phase II which was the phase after the acceleration and before the negative acceleration. The constant velocity will exist in a state of equilibrium when there is zero net force being applied.

Some members were harder to stop then others because of their amount of mass. The member with the largest mass was the most difficult to stop while the member with the smallest mass was the easiest to stop.