LAB REPORT 2: Free fall

Noppawich Punyodyana (Bank). 10-3

Objective
-Measure the acceleration of a freely falling body (g) using a Picket
Fence and a Photogate.
Hypothesis
-Acceleration would be constant and the graph would be straight line
and going up, because the acceleration of free fall is gravity.
Materials:
-Power Macintosh or Windows PC
-LabQuest interface
-Logger Lite
-Vernier 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 ale 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 UL.I.
3. Observe the reading on hte screen of the LabQuest interface.
Block the Photogate with your hand; note that the Photogate
ia shown as blocked. Remove your hand and the display
should change to unblock.
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
5. Click 'collect' 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 'stop' to end data collection.
6. Exermine 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
Step 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 hte data table.
Results

1.

Trail 1 2 3 4 5
Slope(m/s2) 9.538 9.773 9.896 9.620 9.721

Analysis

Minimum Maximum Average
Acceleration
(m/s2)
9.54 9.90 9.71

2. If it takes more time it could has a long distance and depend on
time.

3. If speed increases more so it spends less time. It related to the
shape of the distance if distance is the same, but more speed it will
spend less time.

4.

Acceleration due it gravity. g 9.71+ - (0.01) m/s2

6.Yes it does.

7.Yes, because gravity always the same.

Conclusion: Yes , my result follow my prediction based on the
hypothesis , because the result is same to my hypothesis so my result
close to accepted. Even if the result has deviation, but it not to much
it still on the accepted value. In this experiment could have the errors
for example if the person who controls the computer that uses the
experiment it could not it time to the person that drop the item. I
could improve my experiment by concentrate to every step in the
experiment and take a lot of practice.