Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
1. Purpose of lab a) to determine the acceleration of gravity for a freely falling object. b) to gain experience using the computer as a data collector.
Figure 1 shows the position versus time of the free falling ball. The reason its a parabola is because the ball is traveling upward as it is tossed, once it has it peak it will start coming down to its original position. When we used the Analyze/Curve Fit function of the Logger Pro interface we were able to determine the acceleration due to gravity to be no more than 2% off than actual which is 9.8 m/s^2.
The ball is undergoing a constant acceleration, this acceleration being a downward force due to gravity. Figure 1 (the position versus time graph) is a good example of this since the ball's velocity gradually gets smaller due to the negative acceleration.
Figure 2 shows the acceleration versus time of the free falling ball. As expected we have a negative slope proving that the acceleration due to gravity is downward in direction. Using the Linear Fit function of the Logger Pro we were able to determine the acceleration to be -10.03 to -10.65 m/s^2, which is not exactly the accepted value. We determined that the source of error could be attributed to not using the Linear Fit function correctly.
Figure 3 shows all of the values recorded from 3 test trials. Our values were closest to the accepted value of 9.8 m/s^2 when being calculated by the Analyze/Curve Fit function rather the using the acceleration graph.
By means of an experiment we were able to prove that the acceleration due to gravity is a downward force, and to actually determine that it is in fact 9.8 m/s^2. We concluded that our sources of error could have been not using the software correctly, although sources of error could have came from incorrectly calibrated tools, interference of motion detector, or the ball not properly tossed.
