Physics lab-rapport: inclined plane

Purpose: To investigate uniform acceleration.

Question: Will a cart rolling down an inclined plane under the influence of gravity
experience uniform acceleration?

Hypothesis: Yes, I think the cart will experience uniform acceleration, because it will not
change its direction, but will experience an increasing velocity and the acceleration will
remain the same. The gravity is constant in this lab.

Design: the cart will only see the forces of gravity and rolling friction (which is assumed
to be negliable, so the cart should accelerate uniformly as shown by its displacement
which will depend on the elapsed time. The mass of the cart and the angle of inclination
will be controlled.

Materials:
- Ticker tape
- The cart
- The ramp
- Spark timer
- “Angle creator” ( in this case books)

Observation: We saw the cart roll down the inclined ramp, increasing its speed every
second. The ticker tape recorded the velocity of the cart, and every 6th dot equals to 0,1
second.

Analysis:

Error: + 0.5 millimetres

Conclusion: Yes, the cart does experience uniform acceleration, and the hypothesis was
correct. The lab was a good example of uniform acceleration, and thought me how to
calculate this and put it into a graph.

Data table:

a
t (sec) d (cm) v (cm/s) (cm/s)
 t
0,00 0 0/0 0/0

0,10 0,5 5 10

0,20 1,7 17 10

0,30 4,0 40 10

0,40 7,9 79 10

0,50 13,0 130 10

0,60 18,9 189 10

0,70 26,0 260 10

0,80 34,0 340 10

0,90 43,1 431 10

1,00 53,3 533 10

1,10 64,4 644 10

1,20 76,3 763 10

1,30 89,5 895 10