FREE FALL

FREE FALL
FREE FALL

1103
GROUP 2
Pitchapa Jitsajjapong
Punyisa Kanpana
Kasin Kasintorn
Natcha Leeungkul
Introduction

Gravity is very important to our everyday lives, without

Earth's gravity we would fly right off it. Without gravity, we
would all need to be strapped down and we surely wouldn’t
be able to live without it. According to Emily R.
Morey-Holton (2019), gravity has been constant throughout
the history of Earth. This simple fact masks the complexity
of gravity as an evolutionary force. Gravity is a vector, i.e. a
force that has magnitude and direction at each point in
space. Gravitational loading is directional toward the center
of the Earth. Gravitational loading acts on all masses at the
Earth’s surface and defines the weight of each object.
Weight is the product of the object’s mass times the force
of gravity, which on Earth is equal to 1 G. Object falls at the
same speed even though it has a different mass which is
called the equivalence principle. If you take two balls of
different masses to the top of a building and drop them,
they will hit the ground at the same time. There is a specific
acceleration that all objects fall at called a standard gravity,
or "g". It equals 9.807 meters per second squared (m/s2).
 In this lab, we mainly use formulas which are the
formulas for finding the distance, finding instantaneous
velocity, and finding percentage difference. The formula we
use to find the distance is Yf= Yi+Vit+12gt2. The formula
we use to finding percentage difference is % difference =
2(height measured - height calculated)height measured +
height calculated. We use the percentage difference
formula to compare the height that will be measured and
the height which will be calculated from the distance
formula. The most vital information would be the time
recorded by us which we will need to use in the formula.
Objective
The main objective of this experiment is to compare the
free fall between a heavy object and a light object to
determine the difference between each type of object in
velocity, time, and calculated distance referring to the time
and the acceleration of the object(-9.8 m/s2).

Materials
Setup

9.49m
 Procedure
1) Assign the role of each member:
3 timers at 4th floor
Timer A: Drop balls (Fah)
Timer B: take note (Poon)
Timer C: Measure with a measuring tape (Lookpeach)
1 ball collector at 2nd floor (Unn)

2) Timer go to 4th floor with

- 6 balls ( 3 tennis ball + 3 table tennis ball )
- Measuring tape
- 3 stopwatches
- Worksheet
- Pen

3) Timer C use a measuring tape to measure the

height from the baloney to the ground with
assistance from ball collector on the 2nd floor

4) Timer B note down the measure height

5) All timers get ready to record the data

6) Timer A drop the ball at the same time, give the signal
to start time recording until the ball hit the ground. (All
timers measure the time seperately)

7) Timer B write down all timers

measurement in the worksheet

9) Ball collector bring all the balls back to the

laboratory

8) Repeat for trail #2 and #3. Then move on

to the next object ( 3 more trails)
Data and result
Calculation
Heavy object
Light object
Instantaneous Velocity
Analysis
Heavy Object
- On the first try, all the timers get the most accurate result but the
%difference is higher than the standard 10% because we did not
press the timer at the exact same time when the objects hit the
ground or because of air resistance.
- For calculating Yf, both Yi and Vi are equal to zero because we
dropped the object without using any force.

Light Object
- The %difference is higher because of the significant difference
between the calculated distance and the measured distance.
- For calculating Yf, Vi and Vi is still equal to zero because we drop
the object without any force and the object displacement would be
zero.

Instantaneous Velocity
- When finding the velocity and the time of the object when it is in the
middle we will divide the measured distance by two.
- When finding the velocity and the time at the instant before the
object hit the ground, we used the full distance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we compared the data between heavy objects
and light objects. The time it took for the heavy objects to reach the
ground was close to the time that the light object took to reach the
ground. We use the time to calculate the distance of the two
different objects. They were only 2-3 meters apart. For the
instantaneous velocity of the two objects, we made it so that there
are no air resistance and calculated the velocity and the time for
each object when they are in the middle and near the ground. The
calculations we got were the same as each other, which means
that if there is no air resistance, than they will fall at the same rate.

Recommendation
There are some recommendations that we would like to give to
other people who are going to do the experiments that we just did.
We recommend that you have someone or something that can time
the object’s fall accurately. By doing this, it will help your data to be
more accurate.
Reference
“The Origins and Foundations of Mechanics.” Encyclopædia
Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.,
www.britannica.com/science/mechanics/The-origins-and-found
ations-of-mechanics#ref611979.

“Freefall Review.” Khan Academy, Khan Academy,

www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-physics-1/ap-one-dimensio
nal-motion/falling-objects-ap-physics/a/freefall-ap1.
Worklog