Experiment 1: Uniform Acceleration

William Yoshida
9/30/2015
Lab 11: Wednesday 3 P.M.
TA: Ian Powell
Partner: Alex Waz

Introduction
The purpose of this experiment is to study the constant acceleration of a system consisting of two
masses and a pulley on a near frictionless surface. To do this one mass will hang off the pulley
while the other is being dragged on an air track. Figure 1 shows a free body diagram of the
system. The pulley is equipped with a photogate that records the times at which the photogate is
covered or blocks as we will call them. The blocks will then be converted to displacements and
from those displacements, averaged velocities will be calculated. The velocities will then be
plotted and fitted with a linear trend line to ascertain the acceleration from the slope of the line.
T
M
Air Track
T
m

Assuming Air Track to be a frictionless surface.

mg
Figure 1: Free Body Diagram of pulley system

Equation 1 is derived from the free body diagram and the general formula ma :
F=mg=( m+ M )a
a=

mg
( m+ M )

(Equation 1)

The uncertainty in our acceleration is derived as follows:

a=

am 2 aM
+
m
M

)(

(Equation 2)

Experimental Results and Data Analysis

The experiment was conducted using a pulley system with two masses, the glider and a weight.
The set-up of the experiment is shown in Figure 1 above. For each trial we attached the weight to
one end of the string and a glider to the other. We then put the string over the pulley and drop the
weight to collect the data. Using the smart pulley, we gathered block vs. time data for five
different weights. To convert the blocks to displacement, we used the conversion factor:
=1.50 0.05

In order to obtain values for velocity vs. time, the following equation is used to calculate average
velocity between two points in time:
v i=
Where: x is displacement
t

is time

(xi +1x i)
(t i +1t i)

(Equation 3)

Velocity vs. Time for Five Trials

1.6

f(x) = 1.45x + 0.17

1.4
Trial 1: m=2.5g

1.2

Linear (Trial 1: m=2.5g)

f(x) = 0.84x + 0.2

Trial 2: m=5g

Velocity (m/s)

Linear (Trial 2: m=5g)

0.8

f(x) = 0.43x + 0.1

0.6

f(x) = 0.21x + 0.09

f(x) = 0.14x + 0.09

Trial 3: m=10g
Linear (Trial 3: m=10g)
Trial 4: m=20g
Linear (Trial 4: m=20g)
Trial 5: m=35g

0.4

Linear (Trial 5: m=35g)

0.2
0

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

Time (s)

From the results of Equation 2, we obtain the graph in Figure 2, the velocity vs. time graphs from
five trials with varying weights.
Figure 2: Experimental data and trendlines of velocity vs. time from five trials with
varying masses.

Figure 2 shows that as mass increases, the slope of the lines gets steeper meaning that
acceleration is higher. This is due to the relationship between velocity and acceleration, namely
that acceleration is the derivative of velocity with respect to time. Knowing this relationship, the
accelerations of these trials are the slopes of each line. These results are tabulated in Table 1
below.
Table 1: Measured and Predicted accelerations with the difference in their
values.
Trial Number

Acceleration

Acceleration Measured (
m
s2 )

Acceleration Predicted
m
s2

0.1437 0.0008

0.120 0.002

0.024 0.002

0.211 0.001

0.237 0.004

0.026 0.004

( )

( ms )
2

0.426 0.003

0.463 0.009

0.037 0.009

0.83 0.01

0.88 0.02

0.05 0.02

1.44 0.01

1.45 0.03

0.01 0.03

Shown in Table 1 are both the measured and predicted values of acceleration for each trial along
with the difference between the values. The measured uncertainty was calculated from the
regression function in Microsoft Excel, and the predicted uncertainty was calculated with
Equation 2 above.

Conclusion
The purpose of this experiment was to study constant acceleration due to varying masses. We
find that as mass increases, the acceleration increases as predicted. However, Table 1 shows a
considerable amount of error in the data. This is due to a number of factors including human
error in and the fact that the air track was not perfectly level or perfectly frictionless. This causes
the glider to tend to whatever side of the track is dipped which could either make the acceleration
higher or lower depending on the dipped side. Also the fact that there is no such thing as a
frictionless surface means that there is a small amount of friction impeding the glider making the
measured acceleration lower than the predicted acceleration. There is also inherent error in the
data collection equipment that we tried to take into account. This caused our measured
accelerations to be less than the predicted accelerations.

Extra Credit
Upon inspection of the data obtained from the experiment, we find that acceleration is not
constant. In Figure 3 below, we show the acceleration vs. time graph for trial 1 and discover that
as time progresses, acceleration varies significantly. This is caused by compounding error in the
smart pulley device making the curve diverge as time goes on. From this graph, we found the
average acceleration to be:
aavg =0.14 0.03

m
2
s

We came to this by taking the mean of all the accelerations in the data set then calculating the
standard deviation. From the deviation, we then were able to calculate the uncertainty.

Acceleration vs. Time for Trial 1

1.5

0.5

Acceleration (

)
0

-0.5

-1
0

0.5

1.5

2.5

Time (s)

Figure 3: Acceleration vs. Time graph for Trial 1. The diverging nature of the graph is due to
compounding error of the smart pulley system.

3.5