Hovercraft Interia

A.) What does riding on a hovercraft feel like? What would you tell someone to expect if they hadn't tried it? why is riding on a sled, skateboard, etc different than a hovercraft?

   Riding a hovercraft a hovercraft is a lot of fun. It feels like you are floating in mid air! Although, for someone that hasn't ridden one before, I suggest to expect a feeling of instability when starting and stopping. Now if you are to ride a vehicle like a skateboard, it differs than when on a hovercraft. It differs because when riding on a skateboard there is friction between the wheels and the ground. A hovercraft has neither, therefore there is no friction to control the craft and the direction it goes in.

B.) What did you learn about inertia, net force, and equilibrium?

  I didn't learn anything new about inertia, net force, and equilibrium. I already knew that inertia is Newton's first law of motion. The law which states " an object at rest will stay at rest or an object in motion will remain in motion at the same speed in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." I already knew that net force was the vector sum of all the individual forces acting on an object. I also knew that an object can have a net force of zero and still be moving. I knew this because another word for zero net force is gravity. Lastly, I knew that equilibrium is when forces are equal so they cancel each other out. All is well when there is balance!

C.) Based on this lab, What does acceleration seem to depend on?

Acceleration depends on an unbalanced force acting on an object. In other words, the people pushing created the unbalanced force which caused the hovercraft to accelerate.

D.) Based on this lab, when would you expect to have constant velocity?

 I would expect to have constant velocity once an unbalanced force was no longer acting on the object. In other words, when the people stopped pushing the hovercraft.

E.) Why were some members harder to stop than others?

Some members were harder to stop than others because some members had more mass than others. If an object in motion has more mass, then it'll take more of an unbalanced force to stop it.

F.)  Layton Orme Oliveria (me) saluting physics!