Galileo’s experiment: Measuring g from the motion of a cart on a track
IB Physics Higher Level
Full lab report on research question:
Galileo’s experiment: Measuring from the motion of a cart on a track
Student:
Khaled Eltokhy
Date:
03/10/2013
With lab partners:
Hugo Valent
Anders Dypvik
Under the supervision of:
Mark Sylvester
Abstract:
An experiment was done to determine acceleration due to gravity. A track was prepared to let a cart go upwards by a slight hand push and get backwards by gravity. The movement of the cart was measured by an ultrasound sensor. The sensor sent the data to a software called “DataStudio”. The software was to draw a Velocity-Time graph and could determine the gradient of the graph (Change of Velocity over a time interval or simply the acceleration). The angle of the track was changed 9 times, and the velocity-time graph was drawn for each of the angles. Data were collected, gathered and analyzed in order to determine the acceleration due to gravity. Hypothesis:
The acceleration of the cart can be calculated, if the friction and air resistance are considered to be negligible, by this formula:
Where is the angle between the track and the (horizontal) table. The graph should resemble a straight line since and are constant and but in real practice this doesn’t happen because of the effect of friction on the cart. This can be explained like this: while the cart is going upwards, gravity is helped by friction to slow down the cart faster, thus (the acceleration of the cart when it is going up) is greater than what should be. The opposite happens when the cart is going downwards, the friction works against the gravity, thus (the acceleration of the cart when is going down) should be less than what should be. could be correctly calculated where we can eliminate the effect of the friction by this formula:
We can find and from the gradient (Best line fit) of the relevant parts of the DataStudio graph.
Apparatus:
A cart with 1 weight.
A ramp,
Full lab report on research question:
Galileo’s experiment: Measuring from the motion of a cart on a track
Student:
Khaled Eltokhy
Date:
03/10/2013
With lab partners:
Hugo Valent
Anders Dypvik
Under the supervision of:
Mark Sylvester
Abstract:
An experiment was done to determine acceleration due to gravity. A track was prepared to let a cart go upwards by a slight hand push and get backwards by gravity. The movement of the cart was measured by an ultrasound sensor. The sensor sent the data to a software called “DataStudio”. The software was to draw a Velocity-Time graph and could determine the gradient of the graph (Change of Velocity over a time interval or simply the acceleration). The angle of the track was changed 9 times, and the velocity-time graph was drawn for each of the angles. Data were collected, gathered and analyzed in order to determine the acceleration due to gravity. Hypothesis:
The acceleration of the cart can be calculated, if the friction and air resistance are considered to be negligible, by this formula:
Where is the angle between the track and the (horizontal) table. The graph should resemble a straight line since and are constant and but in real practice this doesn’t happen because of the effect of friction on the cart. This can be explained like this: while the cart is going upwards, gravity is helped by friction to slow down the cart faster, thus (the acceleration of the cart when it is going up) is greater than what should be. The opposite happens when the cart is going downwards, the friction works against the gravity, thus (the acceleration of the cart when is going down) should be less than what should be. could be correctly calculated where we can eliminate the effect of the friction by this formula:
We can find and from the gradient (Best line fit) of the relevant parts of the DataStudio graph.
Apparatus:
A cart with 1 weight.
A ramp,