The motion of an object in a loop without friction is a classical example of normal acceleration problems with non-uniform circular motion and of energy conservation laws in Introductory Physics Courses. However, in real life toy car set-ups, friction becomes an important ingredient to determine whether a car will run beyond the top of the loop or not.
This experiment analyzes the motion of a toy car in a loop with a dynamical model that considers the action of three forces: gravity (mg), Normal Force (N) and Friction (FR).
Author: David Ambrosi Jalón, Diego García Maroto, Mario Gomez Alvarez, Noé Méndez Hevia, Maria Velez (teacher)
Contact: mvelez@uniovi.es