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Broad Question
What wax is better for sliding on a ski box?

Specific Question:
Which ski wax glides across a ski box with the most friction? (Depending on force)

Independent Variable:
Ski wax type.

Dependent Variable:
Friction force (g)

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation
Friction- " Force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other." Ski Wax- " Is a material applied to the bottom of skis or snowboards to improve the ski's performance on snow" Spring Scale- "Spring scales can be calibrated for the accurate measurement of mass in the location in which they are used" All descriptions were from Wikipedia.

General Plan:
In this experiment there was a freestyle skiing box that was made, certain kinds of ski wax were applied onto in. A test was conducted to see which one gave you the perfect sliding friction. The experiment was run inside of a garage during March on the weekends. The results were found by the force from the spring scale. The variables were controlled because we were in a garage.

Potential Problems And Solutions:
The ski lifts up and goes to fast over the box so that we cant get good measurements, Solution: Put a brick or some kind of heavy object on the ski to hold it down. The ski falls off the box, Solution: make rail guards so it can only go straight.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns:
The left over wax and wood going to waist. Burning ourselves with the iron. Afterwards, the box will be stored in a safe place so the box doesn't fall apart or break.

Experimental Design
(add the correct headings from the experimental design page before beginning)

Resources and Budget Table

 * ~ Home Depot ||~ $70.26 ||
 * Screws || $17.78 ||
 * Wood || $8.10 ||
 * Ski || $0.00 ||
 * Lexan Sheet || $8.77 ||
 * Paint || $31.98 ||

=**Time Line:**=


 * March 5-March 9, Gather materials and complete design.
 * March 11, Run a test of the set up, not collecting data, just seeing if everything works.
 * March 12, Run first official trials of experiment, collect first data.
 * March 13-16 Complete all trials of experiment and all data collection.
 * March 18-20 Complete all data analysis; mean, median, range, graphs.
 * March 22-26 Complete results and conclusions write up.

Background Research
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Detailed Procedure
=** Step 1. Gather all the material's needed for the project. 4 8-foot planks of 2-by-24-inch plywood 18.25x24-inch sheet of Polycarbonate Sheet or similar plastic top sheet. 16 2-inch wood screws, Power drill with Philips-head bit 8 90-degree framing angles. **=


 * **Step 2. Screw together the 4 planks of 2-by-24-inch plywood into the shape of a box.**


 * **Step 3. Plate the lexan sheet on the top of the box.**


 * **Step 4. Screw the lexan into the plywood.**


 * **Step 5. Make sure the screws are fully into the lexan so none of it is shown.**


 * **Step 6. Make sure the lexan is smoothed out and the screws cannot be felt on the top of the box in order to get the smoothest box possible**


 * **Step 7. Make sure your skis can lightly slide over the box.**


 * **Step 8. Apply pressure to the top of the box to make sure it can hold enough weight to run the experiment.**


 * **Step 9. Hook the spring scale onto the back of the ski and the other side on the front of the ski box.**


 * **Step 10.Make sure the spring scale can stay hooked on to the ski securely. Tilt the ski box at a**


 * **Step 11. Apply the wax by holding a clothes iron above the ski and rub the different kind of wax against it and allow the way to drip onto the ski.**


 * **Step 12. Once the wax has been tested take a wax scraper and tilt it at a 35 degree angle and slowly scrap off the wax until no more is on the ski.**

Photo List

 * [] **

And photos of the Box: Ski: Wax's: Spring Scale: Us: Us doing the experiment: Us after the experiment:

All Raw Data
media type="custom" key="14120812" width="640" height="196"

Graphs




Conclusion
It was concluded that the Dominator wax was the wax that made the ski slide the fastest. It was also concluded that Swix CH.7 wax is the slowest wax of all when on a freestyle ski box and is not recommended. All other waxes were over 450 grams of force away from the leading Dominator wax. This experiment will be used for all freestyle skiers, so they know what wax to use when they wax their skis. This experiment was a complete success.

Discussion

 * The question that was asked was, what wax slides better on a freestyle ski box? This question was answered at the end of the experiment, Dominator wax slides the best. To support this answer we ran multiple trials and each time when Dominator wax was used the ski slid across the box the best. Dominator wax was always at least 689 grams above all the other waxes (More the grams better the sliding of the ski and wax). Dominator wax is the best wax because it also increases speed when some of the other waxes actually slowed down the ski from when the ski had no wax. **
 * The hypothesis was not supported by the results, the results were unexpected. Through the research that was done prior we had no idea what the results were going to be. What was known from the experiment itself was that the more expensive waxes would probably work the best, but which expensive wax would work the best was unknown. **
 * Within the data the only trend you can really notice is that the more expensive the wax the faster it went except when it came down to Dominator wax, it wasn’t the most expensive but it worked the best. There was not much of a relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable, other than the way we let the ski go. The higher we let the ski go the harder it came crashing down and getting a read on the number of grams was impossible, so the spring scale was tied to a shorter piece of string so it didn’t go so hard. **
 * Some problems that were managed during the design of the experiment were the experiment question by itself and where was the experiment going to take place. During the experiment the problems were different, getting together to do the experiment was a little problem but easily managed. Another problem was the question itself again because it could be interpreted two different ways, one being that we were pulling the ski and the other be that we were dropping the ski (we ended up dropping the ski). As the experiment was run we tweaked some things like how many times we slide the wax on and how big the string was that the spring scale was hanging from. A couple things could have been done differently but not all would have been better, like using a different ski could have been better because we used an old ski. And maybe we could have used a better spring scale one that could measure higher. Other than that the experiment was smooth and very little problems. **
 * The technology that we needed for this experiment was a spring scale, a ski, some string, a freestyle ski box, and pencil and paper. using more high tech items then what was used would help, like a better spring scale than can measure up to high grams of force. For information to do this experiment the suggested places to look are in a book or in a secure place online, not Wikipedia their information isn’t always correct. The experimental design and results of this experiment can help improve someone learning about this question in the future by what went wrong in this design that was done, like the spring scale, string, and others. The results from this experiment would help because some of the results are too close due to the lack of technology we had with the spring scale. **
 * This knowledge gained through this experiment will be used to help freestyle skiers how to determine the speed they want to travel on a skiing box. This information sorts out the best and worst ski waxes to use while sliding on a box. Some skiers might want a wax that will slow them down a lot more on a box so that way they can do a lot more on the box. On the other hand, some skiers might want a wax that will shoot them off the box as fast as possible. There are many reasons why a skier would want to gain or lose speed but this experiment gave them the results that would help them determine which was to use out of those five waxes. **

Benefit to Community and/or Science
This is a benefit to us as skiers and to all freestyle skiers who want a nice slide on their ski as they go over a box.

Abstract
A wooden freestyle skiing box was created to use to see which ski wax would give the best sliding friction. The box was drilled together, than covered in an epoxy paint. We filled the cracks of the box with a epoxy filling to make sure no moisture got inside the box. The ski was rubbed with five different kinds of wax and the amount of friction (in newtons) was recorded. After the result for that wax was recorded the wax was scraped off the ski and a new wax was applied. After a wax was rubbed on the ski (10 strokes for each wax) the ski would be buffed 10 times end to end. It was concluded that the Dominator wax was the wax that made the ski slide the fastest. It was also concluded that Swix CH.7 wax is the slowest wax of all when on a freestyle ski box and is not recommended. All other waxes were over 450 grams of force away from the leading Dominator wax. This experiment will be used for all freestyle skiers, so they know what wax to use when they wax their skis and are planning on sliding on a lot of boxes. . This experiment was a complete success in finding out which wax helps glide across a ski box the fastest.