Isaac Newton, probably one of the greatest scientists of all time, formulated the basic laws of motion. His first law, the law of inertia states that an object will remain at rest to at a steady motion in a straight line unless an external force is applied. Because of friction and gravity this law is not obvious on Earth, but in Space it is. Aristotle thought the natural state of objects was at rest, Galileo questioned this and Newton disproved it.
Newton’s second law of motion states that force is equal to mass times acceleration. Force is set by the power level so for a mass that does not change, if you increase the force acceleration goes up. And if you increase the mass, acceleration will go down.
When a force is applied to change the speed or direction of an object, work is done against inertia. Inertia is the property of an object to stay in rest or in constant straight line motion. To change energy we apply work. During our experiment, this happened when we lifted the weights to change the mass. Work is equal to the force times distance. Work and energy are related. When work is done there is a change in energy since energy is the ability to do work (Joules).
Battery Discharge is directly proportional to energy. Some of that energy was lost during the experiment by the turning of the wheels also known as frictional losses. The kinetic energy was transformed to potential energy which is energy that a body has and has not spent. Power equals work divided by time. The greater the power, the faster it will go.
