Introduction:
The objective of this lab report was to observe a glider on an inclined air track and measure the amount of time it takes to travel from one point to another. The use of an inclined plane helps us study the correlation between the elevation of the incline and acceleration down the incline, which can be used to determine the acceleration caused by gravity. As we increased the height of the incline, the acceleration also increased, thus making the glider go faster. This helped us verify Newton’s second Law of Motion to a certain degree.
Theory:
The principle we tested in this lab was Newton’s second law that states the net force on an object is equal to the mass of the object times its acceleration (F ⃗=ma ⃗). The formulas we used were: Δx=V_0x t+(a_x t)/2, we assumed the initial velocity V_0x=0 because it is extremely small, then we solved for a_x to get a_x=2Δx/t^2. a=gsin(θ).
Experiment:
The materials used in this lab were an air track, an air blower, a glider, computer, and wooden blocks. For table 1, my group and I started by making sure the air track was functional along with the motion detector if the air blower was working, and running the computer program for gathering data. Then, we measured the height of only one wood block
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This helped us to verify Newton’s second Law of Motion. I believe our “true” objective in this lab was met sufficiently, that was to understand the implications of Newton’s second law. However, the data we gathered does not reflect the theoretical value of gravity greatly as we were not able to get a single calculation of G that was under 10m/s^2. Fortunately, our main sources of error were human errors and that does not conclude the second law is false. Therefore, I think errors are