Rubber Band Lab

Rubber Band Lab

In this week's lab, we had to answer two big questions: 

"How can we store energy to do work for us later?"

“How does the force it takes to stretch a rubber band depend on the 

AMOUNT by which you stretch it?” 

To answer these questions, we had to follow some steps.

1. Plug in the force probe, hold it horizontally, and zero it.

2. Then, hook the force probe over both strands of the single looped rubber band. 

3. After pulling the rubber band 1cm (.1m) for 10 seconds, measure the average amount of force.

4. After finishing these steps, repeat them but use the lengths of 2cm, 3cm, 4cm, and 5cm.

We recorded the following data:

• Length | Force (single looped rubber band)
• .1m      |  .7n 
• .2m      |  1.4n
• .3m      |  2n
• .4m      |  2.8n
• .5m      |  3.4n
• Length | Force (double looped rubber band)
• .1m      | 4.2n
• .2m      | 5.7n
• .3m      | 7.3n
• .4m      | 9.9n
• .5m      | 12.8n

In this lab I learned about:

• Hooke's Law
• Multiple different equations

Real World Connection:

"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth I knew not where." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Bows must be made of elastic material. When the bow is drawn back, energy is stored. The farther back the bow is drawn, more energy is stored in the bow. After the bow is released, all the energy stored in the bow is transferred to the arrow, and away it goes.