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Re: Monitor traffic speed



A student wants to monitor speed of cars on her street while she's at school.
Has anyone on the list tried something like this? Suggestions for a simple
experimental set up would be appreciated. The student would ideally like to
use a CBL, LabPro or Pasco interface and use a computer to efficiently
calculate speeds from the data collected.

Simplest idea so far (but labor intensive):
- Videotape the street from her window, using trees or lines on the street to
indicate distance. Then measure speed by (dist per frame)/(frame rate) or
use VideoPoint software).

Thanks,
Owen
(kugelgen@aol.com)

There is an intriguing problem that happened to a friend of mine when
they tried to do this some time back. They were doing a low-tech
operation, where the students stood by the road with stopwatches and
clipboards. When the drivers saw the students with measuring
equipment, they all immediately slowed down, making the speed
measurements all invalid since they were not anywhere near constant
speed. Here is a classic case of the act of observation having an
effect on the results of the observation.

Just imagine what would happen when those drivers saw the kids out
there with hi-tech measuring equipment. They would probably all stop!
I can see the headlines now: "Physics class creates gridlock!--Film
at 11" It would be a great experiment, but maybe it ought to be the
psychology class doing it.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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