You are in charge of quality control (QC) for a manufacturer of toy cars. Recently the company started manufacturing toy dune buggies at a new factory. Your job is to set up quality control procedures for the new factory so that assembly employees can use simple equipment to determine if the motion of the toys is consistent those from the original factory.

 

You decide that the most familiar tools to use for the quality control measurement are a meter stick and a cell phone. The cell phone can be used at least two ways, one simpler than the other. The easiest way is to use the cell phone as a stopwatch. The more complicated way is to use the cell phone's video camera. You measure the motion of the toy to determine if the simplest technique of using the meter stick and the stopwatch will do just as well for quality control purposes as using the video camera and the meter stick.

equipment used: You have a motorized toy dune buggy, a meter stick, a video camera, and a stopwatch.

question: With the limited tools on hand, what sorts of measurements can you make? Devise a plan to measure the motion of the toy with and without using the video camera. Which will work best for a factory based QC measurement? Why?