Electric Car of the Future
"ARE ELECTRIC VEHICLES A LOT SLOWER THAN REGULAR VEHICLES?"
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HYPOTHESIS: When tested against a gas-powered vehicle, electric vehicles will be slower than gas-powered vehicle.
Their experiment included the following variables:
- Manipulated Variable: an electric vehicle
- Responding Variable: the "response" of an electric vehicle compared to a gas vehicle
- Controlled Variable: a regular vehicle (what is constant, unchanged)
No earlier research was done before these experiments were performed. For this experiment the Mythbusters did experiments on different types of vehicles (gas & electric), comparing their speeds to regular vehicles. They did 4 tests to come up with their solution:
Test #1: They chose to use Saturn vehicles, 1 which was gas-powered and 1 electric-powered. The driver was given headphones so he couldn't hear & the passenger was given blindfold so he couldn't see. Based only on their perceptions, both the driver & passenger felt that the electric car was a "smoother" ride. The driver said also that the electric car seemed slow, or "sluggish"at first, but it seemed to speed up quickly afterwards. The acceleration on the electric car took longer.
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Test #2: Mythbusters built an electric go-kart & bought a gas-powered go-kart. They drove each go-kart around the track 4 times, only counting the fastest lap. Results showed that not much difference was seen in the times between the 2 vehicles, even though the electric vehicle also had a much heavier battery in it weighing over 120 pounds!
