An experiment for Santa

On Monday our class received a letter from Santa.
Santa told us that Rudolph is sick this year. He has caught a cold and won't be able to help pull the sleigh this year.
Santa asked us to find out which surface is the best surface for his sleigh to travel on.
Yesterday we did an experiment to find the solution to our problem.
We built a model sleigh and tried pulling it across different surfaces to see which would be easiest for the sleigh to go on.
We measured the size of the force with a Newton meter.

We used a Newton meter to see if it needed a big force or a small force.

We tried pulling the sleighs across surfaces like grass, sand, tiles, and soapy lino. We don't have any icy places in Australia because it is too hot, so we used soapy lino to make it slippery like ice.

We found out that some of the surfaces were better than others. It took a big force to pull along rough surfaces like sand, carpet and bitumen. It took only a small force to pull along smooth surfaces like lino, soapy lino and cement.

Today we are writing letters to Santa to tell him our recommendations.

We hope Rudolph gets better soon.

Soapy lino was easy to pull on. It only needed a little force. 

In the sand it was very hard to pull the sleigh because it kept getting bogged. 

The sleigh could slide along the grass but not as easily as on the soapy lino.