Lab Assignment 7: Circular Motion
Instructor’s Overview
Circular motion is an integral part of our everyday lives. We experience circular motion when we leave highways on cloverleaf exits and on amusement park rides. Countless systems and devices leverage circular motion. We will discuss real-world applications in this module’s discussion. In this lab, you will directly experiment with uniform circular motion and quantify the behavior of a simple system. To execute the lab, you’ll synthesize your knowledge and experience with free-body diagrams and Newton’s second law.
In this lab, you will create a simple system of two different masses connected by a piece of fishing line. Here’s the twist: The fishing line is threaded through a tube. You will rotate the tube and achieve an equilibrium situation where the lower mass is vertically stationary. You will then use your knowledge of circular motion to analyze the situation.
This activity is based on Lab 8 of the eScience Lab kit.
Take detailed notes as you perform the experiment and fill out the sections below. This document serves as your lab report. Please include detailed descriptions of your experimental methods and observations.
Experiment Tips:
Material and Methods Results
Data table:
*Complete this column after performing the calculation in question 5 below.
Based on your results from the experiment, please answer the following
questions:
Radius (meters) |
Time for 15 revs |
Period (sec) |
Theoretical Period (sec)* |
0.25 |
|||
0.40 |
|||
0.15 |
Please add vectors to create a free-body diagram. Assume that m1 is rotating at a speed v with a constant radius R.
The following forces should be included in your free-body diagram:
7. Wereyourexperimentalvaluesclosetothetheoreticalvalues?Howcould you improve the experiment to reduce error?
Conclusions
References
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