One Dimensional Motion
Description of Experiment
In this experiment, we developed a strategy for determining the constant gravity with the equations of motion. We then compared our experimentally determined value to the known true value to establish the validity of your experiment. The experiment itself consisted of dropping an object from a certain height. The object of our choice was a mechanical pencil. We dropped the mechanical pencil from a height of 25cm. Our group set up a wall using a binder and attached a ruler to the board to make sure to drop the pencil from the same height each time. We also set a timer next to the ruler to check the amount of time it takes for the mechanical pencil to hit the ground. We dropped the pencil a total of ten times, and noted the change in times, heights, etc. in a Google Spreadsheet. To make our lives a little bit easier, instead of hand solving all the equations for the acceleration we plugged the equation Δx = Vo * Δt + 1/2a * ( Δt)^2 in the Google Spreadsheet to do the calculations for us. If we were to do this equation by hand we would derive an equation for acceleration using this formula, 2Δx/t^2 = a. You can see below, our Google Spreadsheet, we calculated the average and the standard deviation of the accelerations to compare our data with that of the acceleration of standard gravity. Unfortunately our calculations weren't close to gravity, we had about a 34% error. While doing this experiment we had to think about different factors. We dropped the pencil several times so we had to take into consideration that because we were in a non professional experiment space we would be dropping the pencil at sometimes different heights. Also even though we had a timer, we could not rely on the timer as much as we would be able to with a stopwatch. We could possibly become more precise with the stopwatch and stop it at the exact time as opposed to before or after the pencil hit the ground. Below are two pictures of the setup of our work/experiment.
In this experiment, we developed a strategy for determining the constant gravity with the equations of motion. We then compared our experimentally determined value to the known true value to establish the validity of your experiment. The experiment itself consisted of dropping an object from a certain height. The object of our choice was a mechanical pencil. We dropped the mechanical pencil from a height of 25cm. Our group set up a wall using a binder and attached a ruler to the board to make sure to drop the pencil from the same height each time. We also set a timer next to the ruler to check the amount of time it takes for the mechanical pencil to hit the ground. We dropped the pencil a total of ten times, and noted the change in times, heights, etc. in a Google Spreadsheet. To make our lives a little bit easier, instead of hand solving all the equations for the acceleration we plugged the equation Δx = Vo * Δt + 1/2a * ( Δt)^2 in the Google Spreadsheet to do the calculations for us. If we were to do this equation by hand we would derive an equation for acceleration using this formula, 2Δx/t^2 = a. You can see below, our Google Spreadsheet, we calculated the average and the standard deviation of the accelerations to compare our data with that of the acceleration of standard gravity. Unfortunately our calculations weren't close to gravity, we had about a 34% error. While doing this experiment we had to think about different factors. We dropped the pencil several times so we had to take into consideration that because we were in a non professional experiment space we would be dropping the pencil at sometimes different heights. Also even though we had a timer, we could not rely on the timer as much as we would be able to with a stopwatch. We could possibly become more precise with the stopwatch and stop it at the exact time as opposed to before or after the pencil hit the ground. Below are two pictures of the setup of our work/experiment.