Mass vs Acceleration vs Gravity

Our final lab in our "Gravity Unit" deal with mud puddles. We wanted to make a model that could be tested which involved throwing different weights of "rocks" into "mud". Obviously, this would be not only messy, but hard to collect accurate data on to see if more mass impacts how deep it goes due to gravity. After brainstorming in class, ideas such as jello, pudding, corn starch, and pancake batter came up to represent the mud. Walmart has the best price on flour, and just about every bag was purchased. For the rocks, Home Depot had different sized bolts that would work well. Megan had the idea on attaching a string to each bolt so that we could accurately measure how deep it sunk into the flour, while also making it easy to pull out. Our lab took two days. The first day we explored and collected data on different mass bolts and how far they sunk into the flour due to gravity after being dropped from 1 meter above the rim of a five gallon bucket. Averages were found for each group and then a class average was found. Patterns emerged and students used the data to predict the depth of a 80 gram bolt being dropped from the same height. Some groups were only over 3 mm, while everyone in the class fell within 1.5 centimeters of the actual depth. Discussions took place with models showing how it isn't that the heavier mass object falls faster, but the gravitons emitted by objects with more mass were being pulled down more by gravity.