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Physics 193 Fall 2008
Lab 1: Force and motion I
Welcome to your first Physics 193 lab. Each week you and your lab partners will work together designing experiments to
accomplish specific goals. You will also have a virtual partner who will not be present in the lab but will want to learn
about it by reading your lab reports. Their name is Saalih. Saalih has knowledge of mathematics but not of physics, so
you’ll have to be clear and complete in your writing.
LEARNING GOALS OF THIS LAB:
1. Observe, record, and represent different types of motion.
2. Develop a qualitative rule relating an object's change in motion to the unbalanced force exerted on it by other
objects.
3. Represent your ideas in multiple ways to help understand what you are trying to describe.
I. OBSERVATION EXPERIMENT: RECORDING AND REPRESENTING MOTION
The goal of the experiment is to learn how to record the motion of an object and represent its motion using a motion
diagram.
Available equipment: You have a toy car, a tennis ball, sugar packets, a meter stick and a stopwatch.
MOTION OF A TOY CAR
Place a toy car at rest on the floor. Practice having one group member call out a signal every second (for example
“Now!”). Get the toy car moving in a straight line on the floor. Walk beside it and when you hear the signal, place sugar
packets to mark the locations of the car each second. Write the following in your report:
a) Decide where you will place the origin of your coordinate system. Measure the positions of the sugar packets
relative to that origin and record the data. Explain in detail the things you had to consider in doing this. It’s not as
simple as it seems.
b) Do you think that if you repeat the experiment you would get the same results? Is it worth repeating the experiment
again? Explain.
c) How would you classify the object’s motion: motion with constant rate, increasing rate/decreasing rate? Explain
how you decided.
d) Now imagine that you want to describe the experiment to Saalih, so Saalih can understand both the procedure and
the results. Is it better to use words or there is another, more concise way? Think about which parts of the
experiment and the results are important and which are not. Once you have thought about this, describe the
outcome of the experiment to Saalih in an efficient way.
MOTION OF A TENNIS BALL
Next, roll a tennis ball along the floor so that it moves at a reasonable speed. Walk beside it and place sugar packets to
mark the locations of the ball every second. Make sure to roll the tennis ball carefully so that it rolls in as straight a line
as you can manage. If the ball starts to curl near the end of its motion, what will you do to deal with the situation?
Repeat steps a)‐d) above but instead for the tennis ball.
DRAWING A MOTION DIAGRAM
Read the box ‘Reasoning Skills: Constructing a Motion Diagram’ in the Active Learning Guide (ALG) on page 1‐8. Then
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draw a motion diagram for the car and another for the tennis ball. Remember to include dots, v arrows and Δv arrows.
How is the motion diagram different from your written descriptions of the results of the two experiments? Which is
more informative? Which is more efficient? Explain your reasoning.
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Physics 193 Fall 2008
II. OBSERVATION EXPERIMENT: FORCES EXERTED ON AN OBJECT BY OTHER OBJECTS
The goal of this experiment is to learn to represent forces exerted on an object by other objects in a clear and efficient
way.
Available equipment: Bowling ball and tennis ball.
Pick up a tennis ball and hold it stationary in your hand. Then pick up a bowling ball and hold it the same way. Do you
feel any difference? Now we will learn to represent this difference graphically. For each situation (tennis ball and
bowling ball) do the following (A more detailed explanation of free‐body diagrams can be found in the ALG on pages 1‐
13 to 1‐14):
a) List all the objects that interact with the ball. The ball is called the “object of interest” since it’s the interactions
affecting the ball that we are focusing on. To interact, the objects need to touch the ball—however the Earth is an
exception – it can interact from a distance. Explain how you can represent these interactions on a diagram so that
Saalih can understand the interactions, and also your reasoning about them. After doing this, read on.
b) Represent the ball with a dot and use an arrow to represent each interaction of another object with the ball.
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Connect the tails of the arrows to the dot. Label each force arrow with an F that has two subscripts. The first
subscript is for the object that exerts the force on the object of interest, and the second subscript indicated the
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object of interest itself. For example, the force that the hand exerts on the ball can be written as FH on B . Pay
attention to the lengths of the arrows on each free‐body diagram. Should any of them be longer compared with the
others?
c) Indicate what forces “cancel” or “balance” each other. Indicate if there is an “unbalanced” force. Explain how your
free‐body diagram is a better way of describing the forces being exerted on an object than written text.
d) Why are forces represented by arrows and not just by numbers or lines?
III. TESTING EXPERIMENT: DOES AN OBJECT’S MOTION ALWAYS OCCUR IN THE DIRECTION OF THE UNBALANCED
FORCE EXERTED ON IT BY OTHER OBJECTS?
The goal of the experiment is to test two ideas (also called ‘hypotheses’):
1. An object always moves in the direction of the unbalanced force exerted on it by other objects
2. An object always changes its motion in the direction of the unbalanced force exerted on it by other objects.
Available equipment: Bowling ball, mallet, sugar packets, tennis ball, ramp
a) First, think about the two competing ideas that you are testing. Think about how you can use the available
equipment to design experiments relevant to both of them. Also, think what the words ‘test an idea’ mean in real
life. Does “testing” mean trying to support an idea or trying to disprove an idea? When you come up with at least 2
possible experiments, call your TA over and discuss your experiments with them.
b) After your discussion with the TA, record the two experiments you are going to perform. Draw pictures and free
body diagrams for each situation.
c) Make a prediction of the outcome of each experiment if idea 1 were correct.
d) Make a prediction of the outcome of each experiment if idea 2 were correct.
e) Make a table to record the following information for the ball: (1) the direction of the motion; (2) the direction of the
change in motion; (3) the direction of the unbalanced force. Then perform each experiment, record the outcome in
the table and decide if any of the predictions are consistent with the outcomes of the experiments.
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Physics 193 Fall 2008
f) Make a judgment about each idea. That is, decide which, if any, of the ideas seem to describe the way the universe
functions.
g) How would you convince Saalih that your judgments of the ideas are reasonable?
h) Experiment 1 was called an observational experiment and experiment 3 was called a testing experiment. How do
these names reflect the differences in performing these two kinds of experiments? (What aspects does one kind
have that the other type does not?)
i) Design, describe, and perform two more experiments in which the object does not move in the direction of the
unbalanced force. Draw a motion diagram and a force diagram for each experiment.
j) You have represented motion and forces in different ways. Explain how these representations helped you to find a
pattern/relationship between motion and forces.
IV. WHY DID WE DO THIS LAB?
a) In a paragraph, summarize what you have learned during this first lab in terms of physics content and in terms of the
purpose of the two kinds of experiments you designed and performed.
b) Describe how your understanding of the relationship between force and motion is different from your
understanding before.
V. HOMEWORK
Lab 2 is a quantitative lab. To be successful in lab 2, you will need to first learn about experimental uncertainties. To help
you learn about them there is a document on the course website. Please download the document and read the
document carefully. After you finish reading, solve the following problems. They will help you learn how to estimate
uncertainties and how to use them to evaluate experimental results. Please complete the homework at home on a
separate sheet of paper before coming to lab 2. We will read your answers and provide feedback. If you are not satisfied
with the grade, you can always improve it (see the syllabus).
1. The following instruments are available in your laboratory. What would be the absolute uncertainties in the
measurements made with these instruments?
a. Ruler b. Protractor
c. Watch d. Scale
2. Measure the length of the pencil. Estimate the relative uncertainty in the measurement.
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Physics 193 Fall 2008
3. By using the instruments from the task 1, you have determined that it takes 3 s for a toy car to travel through the
distance of 162 cm. What are the relative uncertainties of the distance and time measurements? Which measurement is
the least uncertain?
4. Calculate the average speed of the toy car. Decide whether you can use the weakest link rule to determine the
relative uncertainty in speed estimation. Determine the range of possible values for the actual average speed of the car.
5. Why do we need to calculate relative uncertainty? Why isn’t absolute uncertainty enough?