Hot wheels
I've been been looking for one of these sets for years, so I was really excited when I walked through the local toy shop to find this for only 99 kroner (about £12). I used to have one when I was a boy and thought it would be good to use for some circular motion experiments. It's a cheap version of hot wheels with a loop the loop extension. Its a classic IB paper 2 question to calculate how high the ramp should be. The answer is two and a half times the radius, which is interesting since the track is a bit short so the take off ramp has to be almost vertical. That's why there isn't any track after the loop, I used it to extend the approach part. By cutting the loop section it's possible to adjust the loop to give a variable radius so There are two possible practicals I can think of. One is using a light gate and investigating the relationship between the radius and minimum velocity to make the loop. Or, the relationship between the radius and take off height. I would like to use this as a design lab but I don't think there are enough possible research questions so I'll write a worksheet for a DCP lab. Hopefully they won't have sold them all by the time I go back tomorrow because I need to buy a class set. I don't think this will be a problems since the only other person to have bought one is the physics teacher in the other school in the area.