The purpose of this lab was to experience an object in free fall motion, and to see the object accelerate at 9.8 m/s2, due to gravity.
Apparatus:
Students will use a sturdy column with an electromagnet at the top of the column. Hanging on the magnet will be a wooden cylinder with a metal ring around it, and a spark-sensitive tape attached to the column. With the cylinder at the top, the magnet will release the cylinder and the spark generator will spark at 60 Hz, which leaves dots on the tape. Each dot is 1/60th of a second apart.
Explanation:
Once we received our tape with dots marked on every 1/60th of a second, we measured the distance of about 15 consecutive dots. We use excel to plot the data and came up with a distance vs. time graph. Then found the differences of each 2 consecutive dots and divided each differences by 1/60; this gives us the velocity of the wooden cylinder it passes each dot. Using the velocity vs. time graph, we find the acceleration to be 9.47 m/s2. (Every distance is measured in centimeter, and I am referring to every increment as meters.)
With eight groups in the class, we took the acceleration of each group, and found the average and standard deviation. This allows us to draw the bell shape curve and see if majority falls within a certain region and to spot any outliers.
Conclusion
Gravity has been measure to have an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2. Although, in reality, objects on Earth don't accelerate at that speed due to lots of factors that we need to take into account, like air resistance. In this lab, we experienced that gravity was a little under the actual, where our results put acceleration to be 9.47m/s2, and other groups reached somewhere around that value.
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