Free Fall

Hyong Hyong 10-7

Objectives:

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

Hypothesis:

The acceleration will be constant because the gravity of the
Earth is not change. It always be 9.78 m/s. The shape of graph will be
linear graph.

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 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.
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.

Results:

Trials 1 2 3 4 5 6
Slope(m/

9.810m/

12.06m/

4.606m/

9.772m/

9.525m/

9.721m/

Analysis:

1. From your six trials, determine the minimum, maximum, and
average values for the acceleration of the Picket Fence. Record them
in the table.

Minimum Maximum Average
Acceleration(m/

) 4.606 m/

12.06 m/

9.249 m/

2. Describe in words the shape of the distance vs. time graph for the
free fall.

- From the distance vs. time, the shape of this graph is linear
graph. The distance of the picket fence gradually increases follow the
increasing time.

3. Describe in words the shape of the velocity vs. time graph. How is
the related to the shape of the distance vs. time graph?

- From the velocity vs. time, the shape of this graph is also linear
graph likes the distance vs. time graph. The velocity of the Picket
Fence gradually increases follow the increasing time but the slope of
the distance vs. time is steeper than the velocity vs. time.

4. The average acceleration you determined represents a single best
value, derived from all your measurements. The minimum and
maximum values give an indication of how much the measurements
can vary from trial to trial; that is, the indicate the precision of your
measurement. One way of stating the precision is to take half of the
difference between the minimum and maximum values and use the
result as the uncertainly of the measurement. Express your final
experimental results as the average value, the uncertainty to just
one digit and round the average value to the same decimal place.

Acceleration due to gravity, g 9.2 0.9 m/

5. Compare your measurement to the generally accepted value of g
(from a textbook or other source). Does the accepted value fall within
the range of your values? If so, your experiment agrees with the
accepted value.

- The result nearby the value of g that is 9.78m/

but the average

value of the result is 9.247m/

. The reason why the result does not

same with the value of g maybe because the speed of the people who
drop the Picket Fence.

6. Do the results agree with your original hypothesis and
predictions? If yes, tell why your results agree with your hypothesis.
If no, explain what the experiment taught you about free fall and how
the results change the hypothesis you had.

- The results agree with the hypothesis that is the acceleration
will be constant and the shape of the graph will be linear graph
because the gravity of the Earth is not change.

Conclusions:

The results of my experiment follow the prediction based on the
hypothesis. My hypothesis says that the acceleration will be constant
and the shape of the graph will be the linear graph because the
gravity of the earth is always be the same that is 9.78 m/

.
The error that can affect the results is the picket fence might fall
down in the wrong direct. So, it can make the results to do not follow
the hypothesis. In the future, we should improve to carefully when
drop the Picket Fence through the Photogate and might change the
thing to drop because it might tell the different results.