Determining the Mystery Weight ED&G 100 Section 81 Submitted by: Steve Sutton, Jared Rossman, and Andrew

Shertzer Submitted to: Professor Amleh 10/14/2004

Strain Gauge Lab Report Objective: Our objective for the lab was to determine the amount of objects in the mystery weight knowing that each object weighs twenty grams, by comparing the voltage output on a strain gage circuit to a full spectrum of readings from fifty to sixhundred grams. Procedure: We first needed to fabricate a system using a circuit board that would as accurately as possible give us a reading of the output voltage that would change with the weight on the strain gauge. Using the Wheatstone bridge we could easily monitor the voltage output while changing the resistance of the strain gauge. The strain gauge would replace one of the 4 resistors in the Wheatstone bridge. The three remaining resistors were marked at 120 ohms each, than a multimeter was connected between a 120 ohm resistor and the strain gauge to measure the voltage output. An external power supply was adjusted to 6 volts and connected to the Wheatstone bridge, than the whole circuit was balanced to .000 mV using a penchiameter and the final circuit mimics this diagram.

This picture taken from Designing a Weighing System Using Strain Gage: 3rd Edition

To obtain voltage outputs for different magnitudes of weight we needed to increase the surface area of the strain gauge. The Strain Gage was placed on a metal beam that would carry increasingly greater weights to force the beam to bend down, thus, forcing the strain gauge to bend with it ever so slightly as to increase the area of the strain gauge. This would give us a spectrum of output voltages across all weights from zero to 600 grams. The readings were as follows:
Weight(g) Vo(mV) 0 0 50 0.4 100 1 150 1.4 200 1.6 250 2.1 300 2.4 350 2.7 400 3.3 450 3.6 500 4 550 4.5 600 4.7

Analysis: After the team had acquired all of the relevant data, it was agreed that a slope of the trend line needed to be found in order to find a corresponding weight value to the voltage output measured for the mystery weight. Two points were chosen to use in the slope equation [(3,400),(1,250)], .008 was the result. Then the team used the universal line equation and defined y as the 3.3 mV of Vo that was obtained from the mystery weight and m as .008 which was the slope of the trend line obtained from above. This resulted in giving the team the weight that the circuit would need to produce an output voltage of 3.3 mVolts. Now that the team had a weight figure for the mystery weight they could easily find the amount of objects contained within the weight by knowing that each object weighs 20 grams, they simply took 412.5 grams and divided it by 20 grams to get 20.625 objects. Since the amount of the objects needed to be a whole number the group rounded up for good measure to 21 objects. (3-1)/(400-250)=.008=the slope of the Vo-Weight line(m)"y=(.008)x+0 3.3=(.008)x+0"412.5=x(Weight in grams)"412.5g/20g"20.625"21 objects Equations Used: [(y1-y2)/(x1-x2)] y=mx+b

Voltage to Weight Relatonship Graph

Vo Theoretical Vo

4.5

3.5

Vo (m Volts)

2.5

1.5

0.5

0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 Weight (gram s)

Error Analysis: During the experiment, there were several areas where error was able to occur. Balancing the voltage of the multimeter at the beginning of the experiment was not exact, but was still effective enough to complete the lab. In addition to this, when adding weights to the stress gage, the readings on the multimeter varied slightly as the weight moved up and down, giving slight error to the calculations. With these slight errors in the experiment, the data recorded by the team would not have been exact. Conclusion: Although this was a reasonably simple circuit to build, it provided an initial lesson in building circuits, and understanding circuitry. The lab involved the construction of the Wheatstone bridge and strain gage circuit, the application of weight to the strain gage, and reading the results given by the digital multimeter. In addition to the standard increment of weights, a mystery weight was also tested, in order to discover its weight through the calculations. Once the data was recorded, a graph was plotted to display the data. With the resulting graph, a linear line was able to be drawn to show a theoretical and approximate relationship between the weight of the object and the corresponding voltage. By this graph, the team was able to observe how close the calculations were to the theoretical results given by the linear line. The mass of the mystery weight was then able to be determined through the graph by matching the voltage calculated through the strain gage to the corresponding weight. This lab provided an introduction to building circuits, and understanding the concepts behind them. For the most part the lab was a success, save the few errors that occurred with measurements and calculations. Once the concepts of building the circuit were understood, the rest of the lab was rather simple, with few complications arose along the way.