Determination Of “G” By The Falling Ball Method

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Determination of “g” by the Falling Ball Method We are going to conduct a test to determine the acceleration of a steel ball during free fall and then calculating the value of little “g” with the results of the test. This is a lab that will be conducted using a steel ball that is held in place by an electromagnet. When released the ball will pass between a light beam sensor starting the timer and then a second light beam sensor stopping the timer. The distance of the second light beam sensor will be increased after each successful measurement of time at the designated measurement. We will start at 0.1 meters and then increase the distance by 0.1 meters each successful measurement until we are no longer able to get acceptable measurements. As we were conducting the experiment, the farther the second light beam sensor was moved down the shaft the more vertical the shaft need to be in order for the ball to pass between both of the light sensors to achieve an accurate measurement. We were able to easily achieve an accurate measurement at a distance of 1.6 meters. The distances and the measurements were entered into a excel spreadsheet and plotted on a scatter chart. The time measurements were put on the X axis and the distance measurements were put on the Y axis. The distance is drastically increasing as the amount of time increases. On the chart a polynomial trend line was inserted and the equation was displayed on the chart. The chart was cleaned up of lines and color so the trend line was more clearly visible. The chart is displayed below. At this point we take the trend line equation and plug the first number of the quadratic equation into our formula to determine the value of little “g”. Starting equation is: D=1/2gT^2 We take and isolate the T^2 and end up with the formula that looks like this: g/2=T. Take the 4.952 and insert it where

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