Inclined Plane Experiment Plymouth Whitemarsh High School February 20, 2013 The purpose of this lab was

to prove that acceleration due to gravity is constant. In order to prove we created an experiment based off of Galileos Inclined Plane Experiment by rolling a ball down an inclined ramp starting at different distances and recording the times. After recording the times with a stop watch we entered the data into an excel document and produced a graph. The graph that it produced supported our hypothesis by producing graph with a parabolic shape.

Introduction
In order to prove that if we roll a ball down an inclined plane acceleration due to gravity will always constant, we based our experiment off of Galileos Inclined Plane Experiment. In his experiment he rolled a ball down a wooden ramp with a notch cut out of it so it would roll straight. In order to reduce friction affecting the time he sanded and oiled the wood, he timed the experiment with a water clock. By completing his experiment he was able to prove that acceleration due to gravity is constant, we now know that acceleration due to gravity is -9.8 meters per second squared.

Experiment
In our experiment we rolled a small ball down a rail with measurements on it. The rail was raised slightly to produce an inclined plane. We rolled the ball down a small groove so that it wouldnt move side to side increasing the time to reach the bottom. We started the ball at .2 meters, rolled it down the rail five times, recorded how long it took and increased the starting distance by .2 meters. We kept doing this until we reached a starting height of 2 meters. We used a block in front of the ball so that it would not start with any velocity. After collecting the data we entered all of the times into a Microsoft Excel document, and then found the average for each of the distances. Then we entered the average times and distances into a graph, found the line of best fit and accuracy of the line.

Data
Table 1-1 X(Seconds) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 Graph 1-1 Y(Meters) 3.1 4.1 4.7 4.8 5.3 5.4 5.7 5.9 6.3 6.4

Inclined Plane
2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Distance (Meters)

y = 0.134x2 - 0.7302x + 1.1645 R = 0.9853

Series1 Poly. (Series1)

Time (Seconds)

After entering all of the data into Microsoft Excel I entered it into a graph. Then I used the trend function to graph the line of best fit, which is in the form of a parabola, and also found R2 value. The R2 value is .9853, which shows that data is very accurate and supports acceleration due to gravity being constant.

Conclusion
After finishing the experiment one can clearly see that acceleration due to gravity is constant. Our experiment was able to support the Galileos theory that acceleration due to gravity is constant by producing a graph with a parabolic shape. The equation of the graph can also be related to the distance equation, X=Xo+Vot+ at2. All of variables in the distance equation change over time, except for the a value. By the a value staying constant it helps

prove that acceleration due to gravity is constant. The R2 value helped prove the validity of the experiment, considering human error in the experiment. In order to improve the experiment one could use photo gates to take most of the human error out of the experiment because they will take most of the timing error out.

Bibliography
"Galileo's Inclined Plane." NOVA. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/physics/ galileos-inclined-plane.html>.