Samantha Jordan
(Nate Smail and Yacob Olins)
Mr. Smail
AP Physics
Acceleration
To establish a graphical and mathematical relationships between position and time for an object moving down an incline.
In the experiment a car was set on a ramp. The ramp was situated so that one of its ends was more elevated than the opposite end. This experiment was run in three different ways. The first time, a stopwatch was used. Everytime the car passed by a line, marked every 10 centimeters, on the ramp the stopwatch was hit and the time was recorded. So, everytime the car went down the ramp 10 centimeters was added onto the distance until it reached the end of the ramp. This made the experiment especially hard because the car had to be set down the ramp multiple times to get an average of time that it took for the car to go a certain distance. The second time this experiment was done, a video was taken of the car going down the ramp, the time was noted every time the car passed by one of the markers. This was easier because it was not necessary to set the car down the ramp multiple times. It was difficult to pinpoint the exact time that the car passed by a line because the frames of the video were so spread apart. The last time the experiment was done a motion detector was used. The motion detector measured the position of the car on the ramp, related to the time it took for the car to get to that position.
This data table represents the data that was collected in the first experiment. A stopwatch was used to determine the amount of time that the car took to go each distance.
During the experiment it was observed that as the cart moved down the ramp it began to pick up speed. When the information of position vs. time was graphed, a top opening parabola was derived. When the information of velocity vs. time was graphed a linear set of data points, increasing diagonally, was formed. For the velocity vs. time graph, the line remained flat, just above zero.
Because the experiment was run multiple times, using different methods, fairly good data was collected. If just one method was used, such as using the stopwatch, the graphs would’ve been more inaccurate. The equations that were derived for the three mathematical models of x vs. t, v vs. t, and a vs. t, were almost identical to the actual mathematical equations. Acceleration explains the rate at which velocity is changing. Velocity is the speed of something moving in a certain direction, therefore acceleration down a ramp stays constant. When observing the class’s models it was established that all of the graphs were relatively similar. Most of the graphs had points that were very random.
Physics 