Morgan is rolling a marble down the maze.
Activity

Marble Raceway: Investigating The Effect of Size on Speed

In this science project, Janie and Morgan were interested in finding out whether the size of a marble would affect how quickly it rolls down a marble maze.

This science project was done by Janie and Morgan, who are students at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI).  They designed the following experiment to test their hypothesis. They really enjoyed putting together the marble maze first before completing the experiment. 

Hypothesis: 

The large marble will roll fastest down the marble maze.

Materials

Procedure

  1. Get the materials and set them up:
    • marble track
    • timer (iPad can be used a timer)
    • number of glass marbles: three (small, medium and large)
  2. One at a time, roll the marbles down the track.
    • While it is rolling, time the amount of time it takes to get to the end of the track, and then record the time.
  1. This procedure will be repeated 4 times for each of the marbles, therefore there will be a total of 12 trials.
  2. After all the data has been collected, the time(s) will be averaged from each of the trials for each of the three marble sizes. This data will be analyzed in a bar graph.

Data

Conclusion

Our hypothesis was incorrect. The small marble was the fastest.

NGSS Standards:

By Laura Hospitál

collage of marble raceway

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