ScottRory

**Lab: What Is the Acceleration of a Falling Body?**
By: Scott Siegel and Rory Vanderberg

__Objective__: Find out the acceleration of a falling body.

__Hypothesis__: If we drop the mass from the ticker tape timer, and collect a series of data points from the ticker tape, then we will be able to use a position vs. time graph to calculate the acceleration of the falling mass/body. this is procedure not a hypothesis. What is acceleration due to gravity?

__Materials:__ 1. Ticker Tape Timer 2. Timer Tape 3. Masking Tape 4. Mass 5. Clamp 6. Meter Stick

__Procedure:__
 * 1) Locate a mass.
 * 2) Clamp the ticker tape timer to a high-rise cabinet.
 * 3) Tape about two meters of ticker tape to the mass.
 * 4) Set ticker tape timer to 60 Hz.
 * 5) Drop mass from ticker tape timer.
 * 6) Measure distance between all of the dots on the ticker tape.
 * 7) Record data on Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet.
 * 8) Create a Position vs. Time graph using the data.
 * 9) Find the acceleration of the falling body.

__Data Chart__:



__Position vs. Time Graph:__

great results! nice graph!

__Discussion Questions:__ explain and discuss, don't just leave a number here
 * 1) Yes, the shape of our graph agrees with the expected graph because it shows that our mass is increasing in speed and velocity as it moves away from the ticker tape timer.
 * 2) To figure out how our results compared to those of the class, we need to find the percent difference.
 * 3) % Difference= [abs(our value - class average) / class average] x 100
 * 4) % Difference= [abs(951.98 - 874.43) / 874.43] x 100
 * 5) % Difference= [abs(77.5) / 874.43] x 100
 * 6) % Difference= [.088] x 100
 * 7) % Difference= 8.86 %
 * 1) Yes, our object traveled uniformly. We can tell by the shape of our graph. The J-Curve what is a j-curve???? tells us that it traveled at a constantly increasing speed. There were no outliers to the curve.
 * 2) The velocity time graph of the object should look like it is going in a straight, diagonal line up and to the right.
 * 3) The equation of the line is y=475.99x+5.0237x. no x on last term
 * 4) The acceleration might be lower if the weight hit something on the way down, or if someone accidentally touched or grabbed the tape. and higher?

__Conclusion__: In the end, our group was able to find the acceleration of our falling body. However, our percent different told us that our results were slightly off from that of the rest of the class. Some possible sources of error could have been found to be the friction of which we left on the ticker tape, while unraveling it. Also, since we dropped the mass from a high-placed cabinet, the tape was draped over the top over the door, causing more friction, slowing the mass down in its travel to the floor. Luckily we did not use the results that were gained from the mass hitting a table on the way down from the floor, drastically lowering its acceleration. Overall, our experiment was a success in supporting our hypothesis.