Data from Aaron Staley, Mills HS, Millbrae, CA.
Sept 2002, courtesy of Art Fortgang.
Aaron and his group timed a low-friction cart sliding down a track
at various angles. They timed the cart using photogates. The angle
comes from the height at the start and the distance along the track,
which was the same (but not written on the page I saw) for all runs.
The purpose was to figure out the acceleration of gravity.
time is in seconds -- the time it took the cart
to go down the slope.
angle is the slope of the track in radians.
acc is the acceleration of the cart in meters per second
per second
Questions and tasks
In the lab writeup we got, Aaron did not report the length of the
track. What was it?
How can you extrapolate Aaron's data to get the acceleration of
gravity?
Do that. What do you get?
What assumptions did you make in your calculations?
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