Jump to content

HL maths IA topic involving air resistance and car roofs


themthem

Recommended Posts

My teacher recently suggested a maths IA topic that I don't think anyone has ever done before. It is about finding the surface area and volume of car roofs, and investigating how the speed of the car is affected by air resistance.

I could calculate the surface area using integration, but are there any other concepts that I could possible investigate this? For example, would going into drag coefficient be a good idea? I think it involves some calculus.

Thanks for your help!

Link to post
Share on other sites

In general drag coefficient is more of a physics topic. Speed and air resistance is also typically modeled as a linear relationship which is really not that advanced. I think just finding surface area and volume could be enough, especially since most roofs cannot be well-approximated by volume of revolution so it is challenging by itself.

Link to post
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, kw0573 said:

In general drag coefficient is more of a physics topic. Speed and air resistance is also typically modeled as a linear relationship which is really not that advanced. I think just finding surface area and volume could be enough, especially since most roofs cannot be well-approximated by volume of revolution so it is challenging by itself.

Thanks for replying!

So finding the surface area and volume was the original idea, but I thought it was too simple for a Higher Level topic.

Thanks for helping.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...