In this lab we used the smart pulley connected to the photogate to determine the acceleration of a set of masses over a pulley.The setup looked like this picture.
We placed different weights on each side of the pulley and allowed the system to accelerate.
The computer made a graph of distance, velocity, and acceleration versus time for the spinning pulley. Looking at the distance vs time graph (top one)you can see a parabola shape which shows constant acceleration. This shows that the mass goes a further distance each time period. That the distance is proportional to the square of the time. We used the statistics tool to find the slope of the velocity vs time graph (middle one)which is equal to the acceleration. We highlighted the section of the graph and the software calculated the slope of the line.
We then used newton's second law to calculate the acceleration that we should expect given the weights that were used to accelerate the mass of the cart. We then compared the values and found the percent difference between the values.
Atwood machine lab
Procedure
In this lab we used the smart pulley connected to the photogate to determine the acceleration of a set of masses over a pulley.The setup looked like this picture.We placed different weights on each side of the pulley and allowed the system to accelerate.
The computer made a graph of distance, velocity, and acceleration versus time for the spinning pulley. Looking at the distance vs time graph (top one)you can see a parabola shape which shows constant acceleration. This shows that the mass goes a further distance each time period. That the distance is proportional to the square of the time. We used the statistics tool to find the slope of the velocity vs time graph (middle one)which is equal to the acceleration. We highlighted the section of the graph and the software calculated the slope of the line.
We then used newton's second law to calculate the acceleration that we should expect given the weights that were used to accelerate the mass of the cart. We then compared the values and found the percent difference between the values.