Physics Lab Report

LABORATORY REPORT

Acceleration Due to Gravity

Table of contents

Objective 1

Equipment 1

Procedures 1

Recorded data, calculated results, and graphs 1

Discussion 3

Conclusions 3

Objective

In this project we attempted to confirm that the acceleration due to gravity of a freely falling body is

.

Equipment

* Pasco Photogate, ME-9204B

* Pasco "picket fence," a transparent piece of plastic with dark bands spaced 0.050m apart

* Dell computer with Science Workshop 700 interface

* DataStudio and Excel software

Procedures

We dropped the picket fence through the photogate, which was connected to the computer through the Science Workshop 700 interface. The photogate sent to the computer a signal when its beam was broken by one of the dark bands. The Datastudio software recorded for the amounts of time between breaks.

Recorded Data, Calculated Results, and Graphs

We used the Science Workshop program to calculate the velocities and accelerations due to gravity of the picket fence between breaks in the beam using

where Ð"y represents distance traveled between breaks and Ð"t represents the time of travel between breaks. These are the measured values of distance and the calculated velocities and accelerations:

Measured Calculated

Time Position Time Velocity Time Acceleration

( s ) ( m ) ( s ) ( m/s ) ( s ) (m/s^2)

0.04500 0.05 0.02250 1.1111 0.0421 9.84

0.07840 0.10 0.06170 1.4970 0.0771 9.40

0.10640 0.15 0.09240 1.7857 0.1055 10.06

0.13080 0.20 0.11860 2.0492 0.1302 9.64

0.15280 0.25 0.14180 2.2727 0.1523 10.21

0.17290 0.30 0.16285 2.4876 0.1726 9.60

0.19160 0.35 0.18225 2.6738

Average: 9.79

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