Teaching vectors just got easier with the new PASCO Smart Cart Motor.
[Vector Components of Velocity]
Vectors can be difficult for students to grasp.
Teachers struggle to find authentic experiences for students to explore vector properties.
A PASCO Smart Cart equipped with the new Smart Cart Motor
and Wireless Motion Sensor solves these problems. Let's see how.
The motor is attached to the back of the Smart Cart with two included screws and the accessory cable.
The motion sensor is mounted on a rod supported by a Smart Cart rod stand adapter.
The track is placed at an angle to a vertical obstacle, like a wall,
and the motion sensor is pointed at the wall.
As the cart moves away, the position sensor in the cart measures the velocity
and the motion sensor measures one component of the velocity. Let's take a look.
I've connected it to SPARKvue
and set up a Smart Cart Motor control panel.
I set the power for 60.
You can set it anywhere from -100 to +100 because it can go in either direction.
I clicked Auto so that when I start data collection, it'll also start the motor.
I have a velocity-time graph. This is the velocity from the position sensor in the Smart Cart.
The speed would be the magnitude of the total velocity.
Down below is the velocity that the motion sensor measures, and so that's only going to be one component.
When I hit start, we should see both collect.
They stayed pretty constant.
You could get a good reading off of this by using the selection tool
and using the Statistics menu to get an average.
It says it's 0.32 meters per second.
The component down here would be obviously less.
It comes out to 0.27.
You could, using those two values, figure out the angle that the track is to the wall.
If students want to measure that angle,
I found it's useful to have a giant protractor printed out on a piece of paper.
You can use that to easily measure the angle between the wall and the protractor.
For the other component, move the wall to the other side so it's 90 degrees,
or better, place the track in a corner to measure the other component a lot more easily.
Students can experiment with the track angle to develop the relationship between the angle,
the cart velocity, and its two components.
Have two motion sensors? You can simultaneously measure both components
while the cart moves away from the corner.
I know what some of you are thinking.
Have I put three motion sensors on the cart to measure all three components?
No I haven't, but you could. Let me know how it works.
The PASCO Experiment Library has a detailed student procedure for this activity.
There's also a Teacher Guide with advice and sample data.
Other labs in the Experiment Library for the Smart Cart Motor include
a relative motion investigation predicting the location where two carts will meet,
testing the dependence of kinetic friction on speed, programming motion equations with Blockly,
modeling the motion of earthquake waves,
and even programming the cart to respond to the color of light to play Red Light/Green Light.
That's what I have set up in here. This does work under normal classroom lighting.
You can tell we've dimmed the lights here in the studio to make it work.\I have a PASCO Wireless Light source here that can generate red, green,
I have a PASCO Wireless Light Source here
that can generate red, green, and blue or combinations of light being controlled by Blockly on the computer.
I have the Smart Cart Motor and the Smart Cart,
and I've replaced the motion sensor with a light sensor.
The light sensor is sensing what color this light is and then telling the Smart Cart how to move.
Obviously, red light: stop, green light: go, yellow light: go real fast.
No, yellow light: go slow. Let's see how this works.
Going to hit record and it starts with a red light.
Then it randomly generates other colors for two-second intervals.
Here we got an extra-long red light.
Seems like that happens to me whenever I'm late for something.
Then we have green.
When it reaches a certain spot, it wins
and the light turns blue and it backs up and plays again.
This one always wins. It never gets caught moving when it turns to red.
You're seeing on the Capstone display here the color of light:
the green percent and the red percent.
When both are on, it's yellow.
You're seeing the velocity of the cart.
The code is here.
This is all detailed in the activity in the Experiment Library.
So pretty involved combination of things. I'm not saying this is the best thing to do.
But if you have PASCO sensors of your own, you can come up with your own ideas.
We look forward to hearing about what you and your students do with the Smart Cart Motor.
Thanks for joining us today.