Atwood Machine Essay

358 Words2 Pages
Atwood Machine Lab Title: Purpose: The purpose of this lab is to verify the predictions of Newton’s second Law(F=Ma) for the Atwood machine. A machine constructed by hanging two different masses m1 and m2 from a string passing over the pulley and record the acceration Materials: 1. Pulley 2. String 3. Different masses 4. Timer Methods: Newton’s law predicts that acceleration should be proportional to the difference of the masses and proportional to their sum. A=(m1-m2)/(m1+m2)*g. The g= 9.8 m/s^2 is the acceleration due to the gravity. So, we ser the single pulley on the table, and cut a 90 cm string and hanging over the pulley. And mass were stacked on the each hanger of the both sides. The acceleration was measured for various combinations of the two masses. For the first set of the trials, we selected a set of metal 30g(m1) and 10g(m2). And placed them at both sides of the string. The drop height measured to be 45cm. The height was the same to all trials. When the heavier mass was released by the group member, another people used the stop watch to measure the time, three times were measured for each drop. Then average the results. The second trial we chose m1 for 30g and m2 for 20g. The third trial we picked m1 for 35g and m2 for 20g. We did the second and third trial same as the first trial and average each trail’s time. Data: Mass1 | Mass2 | Time1 | Time2 | Time3 | Average Time | 30g | 10g | 0.5s | 0.45s | 0.42s | 0.457s | 30g | 20g | 1s | 1s | 1s | 1s | 35g | 20g | 0.59s | 0.59s | 0.61s | 0.597s | | | | | | | Analysis: The results of the timing results are shown in the Data. Discussion: In this lab, we measured the acceleration of the masses in the Atwood Machine and compared the results to the prediction of Newton’s second law which is F=ma and A=(m1-m2)/(m1+m2)*g. This equation showed that the acceleration should

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