Free Fall

Nol 10-7

Objectives
Measure the acceleration of a freely falling body (g) using a Picket
Fence and a Photogate.

Hypothesis
My hypothesis is the g or acceleration due to gravity force will be
constant at

or you can say that when the Picket Fence is falling,

its speed will increase at the same rate (every 1 second speed will
increase ) because Newtons second law of motion said that

= force, m = mass and = acceleration) in this case, F is

constant because it is free fall (has only gravity force act on it and gravity
force never change), m is constant because the mass of every objects at
everywhere will be equal then

is constant, m is constant so how can

acceleration not constant. Then the graph of velocity and time should be
linear because m or slope or acceleration or g is constant.

Materials
- LapQuest interface
- Logger lite
- Venier Photogate
- Picket Fence
- Clamp and stand to secure Photogate




Procedure



1. Fasten the Photogate rigidly to a ring stand so the arms extend
horizontally, as shown in Figure 1. The entire length of the Picket
Fence must be able to fall freely through the Photogate. To avoid
damaging the Picket Fence, make sure it has a soft surface (such as
a carpet) to land on.

2. Connect the Photogate to the DIG/SONIC 1 input of the LabQuest
or the DG 1 input on the ULI.

3. Observe the reading on the screen of the LabQuest interface. Block
the Photogate with your hand; note that the Photogate is shown as
blocked. Remove your hand and the display should change to
unblocked.

4. Open the file in the Experiment 5 folder of Physics with Computers.
Two graphs will appear on the screen. The top graph displays
distance vs. time, and the lower graph velocity vs. time.

Picket
fence
5. Click to prepare the Photogate. Hold the top of the Picket Fence and
drop it through the Photogate, releasing it from your grasp
completely before it enters the Photogate. Be careful when releasing
the Picket Fence. It must not touch the sides of the Photogate as it
falls and it needs to remain vertical. Click to end data collection.

6. Examine your graphs. The slope of a velocity vs. time graph is a
measure of acceleration. If the velocity graph is approximately a
straight line of constant slope, the acceleration is constant. If the
acceleration of your Picket Fence appears constant, fit a straight line
to your data. To do this, select the straight part of your data and use
the linear fit function in the analyze menue of Logger Lite. Record
the slope in the data table.



7. To establish the reliability of your slope measurement, repeat Steps
5 and 6 five more times. Do not use drops in which the Picket Fence
hits or misses the Photogate. Record the slope values in the data
table.


Result

Test 1










Test 2










Test 3









Test 4










Test 5











Test 6













Trial 1 2 3 4 5 6
Slope (

) 9.60 9.70 9.73 9.70 9.70 9.80

Analysis

1.


2. The shape of graph distance vs. time graph of free fall is curve or
you can say that at the first the increasing of distance will be little
but when the time pass the distance will increase faster and that
happen because the velocity is increasing every 1 second so it make
distance increasing faster and faster.

3. In the graph velocity vs. time graph, we know that it is linear graph
(velocity increase at the same rate because of the constant
acceleration) but in distance vs. time graph, it is curve graph. This is
happen because acceleration is the thing that make velocity change
and velocity is the thing that make distance change then if you have
acceleration, it make your velocity not constant (but change in the
same rate because it has constant acceleration) then if you dont
have constant velocity, it exactly make your distance not constant
and it is also dont change in the same rate because it has velocity
that dont constant or you can think like this, the slope of velocity
vs. time graph is acceleration so it make this linear graph because
the slope is constant but the slope of distance vs. time graph is
velocity so it make this curve graph because the slope is not
constant (from the velocity vs. time graph it tell us that the velocity
is increasing every 1 second).



4.

Minimum Maximum Average
Acceleration (

) 9.60 9.80 9.71

Acceleration due to gravity, g

5. The generally accepted value of g is

so from our result

which is

then our experiment agrees with the

accepted value.


Conclusion (answer for number 6 too)

Our result is follow the hypothesis that g or acceleration due to
gravity force should be constant because the Newtons second law of
motion like I said above then graph of velocity vs. time should be linear
or you can say that its slope also should be constant and from our result,
we got that velocity vs. time graph is linear so it tell us that m or slope is
constant and slope of this graph is

and in this graph ,

then we get slope of velocity vs. time graph is

or or
g (for free fall) then we conclude that g is constant and it is quite difficult
to have the errors in my result because in this experiment, we test it for 6
times and all of them are linear graph.