Lab Report 1

Experiment 1-- Uniform Acceleration

Chen Manni UID: 304145309 Aug 12th, 2013 Partner: Qi Li Serial numberCI-6537 Physics 4AL 10 TA S. W. Hong

The purpose of experiment 1 is to study a system that moves with the constant acceleration. In the experiment, a glide that has the mass M can move on a horizontal air-track. After the air-track is level, M can be regarded to move without friction. In vertical direction, a hanging weight, m, is connected to the glider by a thread over a smart pulley. Without any support, the hanging weight will fall due to the gravity of force, mg, but in the opposite direction, the thread acts a tension force, T. Through the thread, the tension force also drags the glider to move. The smart pulley measures the amount of time it takes for a .015 m length of the string to run over the pulley and record the data in the PC. The acceleration of the whole system can be obtained in two ways, calculation through the recorded data and analysis of forces involved in the system. The comparison will be between these two values to see how well they agree. The step to get acceleration through analysis explains as follow. By using the air-track, the friction on the glider can be ignored. Thus in the horizontal direction, the only force on the glider is the tension force, F.

(M)

(m)

According to the Newtons second law, the free body analysis of M is

T=M . For the hanging weight, in vertical direction, mg-T=m . Because in the whole system, = , = , a=
+

In the experiment, the scale measures the mass of five applied hanging weights and another counterweight. It also measures the mass of the glider with the counterweight on the other end of the balance. The counterweight is measured to be 99.30.05g. The uncertainty is 0.05 because the tick marks on the scale is .1 per gram. Using the counterweight, the glider is measured to be 199.5.1g. The uncertainty, 0.1g, is the sum of the uncertainty of the counterweight and .05g uncertainty in the balance. The following table gives the mass of all measured items. m=mbest is the uncertainty for each item. Items m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 Counterweight Glider(M) Mass 2.90.05g 4.90.05g 18.80.05g 34.30.05g 35.70.05g 99.30.05g 199.5.1g

During the experiment, the smart pulley will send a number every 0.015 meter to PSW. In each turn, about 60 numbers will be recorded and called as time intervals. In order to make the calculation more accurate, fifty measurements are taken from the 3rd reading to the 52nd reading and they are recorded as T1, T2. In order to calculate the uniform acceleration more accurate, the midpoints of each time interval are chosen. The midpoint, tn, can be calculated as tn=tn-1+ (Tn-1+Tn)/2, t1=T1/2. The corresponding velocity is given by vn=x/tn, x is the constant length, 0.015m. The calculation can be processed by excel after the PSW transfers the data to the worksheet. Then the velocities can be graphed against the elapsed time on a scatter plot and a linear trend line is applied to fit the graph. The excel can get its equation, which is in the form v(t)=v0+at, v0 is the initial velocity and a is the measured uniform acceleration. From the formula a=(vt-v0)/t, t is the time interval from t0 when the velocity is v0, to the time when the velocity is vt. It did not matter that the timing measurements did not start from rest when the measured acceleration is calculated. Here are some raw numbers from the experiment for each turn by using different hanging weights. The excel processes the whole data for each turn and make calculations as mentioned above. The last page also provide plots for five runs processed by excel.

Times(s) T1 m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 .118 .121 .045 ..043 .048

T2 .101 .101 .041 .037 .040

T3 .096 .088 .038 .033 .035

T4 .088 .079 .033 .030 .032

T5 .083 .073 .031 .028 .029

T6 .078 .068 ..030 .026 .027

T7 .074 .06 .028 .024 .025

The following table gives the measured acceleration and the predicted acceleration for each hanging weight. It also includes the difference between ameasured and apredicted. Using the formula = error of predicted acceleration is = mentioned above, a=
+

, the

. As

, =0.05g M=.1g. The error of each apredicted

can be calculated. The errors of the measured accelerations are given from the standard error in regression analysis by excel. These values are also included in the following chart. Items ameasured (m/s2) apredicted (m/s2) difference (m/s2) m1 m2 m3 0.13510.0027 0.22170.0041 0.81390.0155 0.1400.002 0.2350.002 0.8440.002 0.005 0.014 0.030 3.6% 6.0% 3.6%

m4 m5

1.41210.0261 1.46110.0265

1.4380.002 1.4860.002

0.026 0.025

1.8% 1.7%

In the calculation above, the friction between the glider and the air track is ignored. If the air track is not level, the non-ignorable friction will resist the glider and the hanging weight accelerating. The measured acceleration, ameasured, will be smaller than the predicted acceleration, apredicted. From the chat above, amearsured is a little smaller than apredicted, which indicates that the track is not perfectly level and a small friction resists the experiment to reach the perfect status. The experiment should be considered successful but further improvement can make the result more satisfying. However, from the last column, the ratio of difference to apredicted decreases (an error existing in the second turn makes the result not so satisfying). Because the friction changes little while the mass of hanging weight increases, but the tension force will change a lot, the error percentage will decrease when the hanging weight increases.

sample graphs
0.7 velocity 0.45 0.4 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 Linear (Series1) Series1 velocity 0.5 0.6 y = 0.1351x + 0.121 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0 1.4 velocity 1.2 1 time 2 3 Series 1 y = 0.2217x + 0.1126

m1

m2
1.6 1.4

time

y = 1.4121x + 0.3198 velocity

1 y = 0.8139x + 0.3137 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0

Series1

1.2 1

Series1

Linear (Series 1) Linear (Series 1)

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Time 0.5

Linear (Series 1) Linear (Series 1)

m3

0.5 Time 1

1.5

m4

1.6 1.4 1.2 1 Series1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Linear (Series1) velocity y = 1.4611x + 0.2741

m5

0.2

0.4 time 0.6

0.8

The x-axis shows the time, and the y-axis shows the velocity. In each graph, the equation is the expression of the trend line in the form, y=ax+b, a is acalculated, and b is v0.