Well another lesson learned or should I say lessons. We have just learned about friction and what it has to do with motion. So basicly what we did was we first got a wooden block and read about what we were going to do with the block. We discovered that we would have to use different surfaces to pull the block across. (we pulled the block 27 cm each time) The surface types we used were table top, wax paper, paper towel, coarse sand paper, and fine sand paper. For the table top and wax paper the friction force was .5 newtons but for the sand papers they were both about 1.6 newtons. The paper towel was about .6 newtons. From that lesson we learned that the rougher the surface type the more friction force. The smoother the surface type the less friction force.

     Our next assignment was to see what would happen if we changed the weight of the block. We started out with one block and pulled it across the fine sand paper that we were assigned to use (everyone else used the either the table top, wax paper, paper towel, or coarse sand paper) then we added more blocks until we got up to four blocks. Our conclusion for this lesson was that the weight of the block defiantly increases the friction force.

     Our third mission was to find out if different surface areas of the block affected the friction force.  Our block looked somewhat like this:

   The type of surface areas we used were skinny-long areas, short-skinny areas, and long-fat areas. After we pulled the block across the fine sand paper with all three sides we saw that it pretty much stayed with the same amount of friction force for every surface area.

Our conclusion for the entire lesson was that friction can be increased and decreased depending on the surface the object is pulled on. The friction will most likely stay the same if you change the surface area of the object. Also if the weight increases the friction will increase and if it decreases the friction will decrease. Now seeing that the surface the object is pulled on can affect the friction amount... can you imagine what it would be like if we had to always walk on ice?