In Year 3, we have been learning about forces and magnetism. In today’s science lesson we learnt how different surfaces have different levels of friction. This is why cycling in long grass is much harder than cycling on the road!
We tested the friction of different materials by placing a toy car on a ramp and slowly raising it up. Each ramp was made of a different material and we measured how high we had to raise the ramp before the pulling force of the gravity was stronger than the force of the force of friction and the car started to move!
The materials we tested were sandpaper, carpet, foam and wood. We discovered that rougher materials such as carpet, had much more friction because we had to raise the ramps higher before the car would move.