Physics-Inclined Plane Lab

If an object is placed upon a surface that is inclined at a certain angle then that will decide the acceleration in which the object is going down the inclined plane. When looking at an inclined plane it is important to see what forces are acting upon it to see what the object is doing. In our case of there was Fn, Gravitational Force and, Fd. These forces act upon the object to see where it is going. In an inclined plane there will always be at least two forces acting upon the object which would be weight (pointing downwards) and force normal (pointing forwards).

Force normal as always been the opposite of the gravitational force, but that is not true because we now of horizontal planes, but this is a inclined plane and the truth is that Force Normal is always perpendicular to the surface the object is on. ength of Ramp: The length of the ramp was always constant as it was 100 cm.

The length of the ramp never changed as the car always began accelerating for a total distance of 100 cm Distance of Motion Detector from Ramp: The distance of the motion detector and the ramp was about 40 cm.

With there being 40 cm between the motion detector and the ramp the data that we collected could be extremely precise. The data would be precise and our acceleration would pin point. The only problem we had at the start was that it took time to set the motion detector to detect the car until we found the perfect place for the ramp to perceive the data.

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Coefficient of Friction: The coefficient of friction was taken away because of the equipment that we used.

For example we had the frictionless car that helped reduce the friction greatly; also the ramp let the wheels fit into the plane which made the friction almost definitely According to our graph above which is the points we got from our lab; we can say that as the angle of inclination increases then the average acceleration would increase. Except for a few exceptions its is proved through our graph that the acceleration is increased as the angle is increased, but for those exceptions we may be able to say that error was involved as 30% is quite high.

We found our data using two different methods and different numbers for each and generally got different answers. By looking at all of our data we can come to the conclusion that the angle of inclination does not affect the acceleration. Like our Projectile Motion lab that we have done recently the projectile went a certain distance at a certain angle and then after changing the angle the distance would decrease after a while. We can say the same for this Lab as that when the angle is lower than 90 the acceleration would increase until the angle is above 90 and the acceleration will decrease again.

This is because if one looks at this problem it makes sense. The car will go much faster until the ramp if perpendicular to the ground and when you lower the ramp to 180i?? then the car will barely have any acceleration considering there is no friction. In our Lab we can calculate that there is about 32% error which is very high, but for several reasons is true. I believe that this 32% error was taken because of random and systemic errors meaning that what we did made the error much higher than it should be and also the fact that the instrument was a bit hard to work with.

One random error was that we definitely did not collect data and that if we did collect more data the results would be much more precise then they are. Another Random Error was the time that we used, we may have not used the time to our best accomplishment as it took much time to prepare and also take all the data down. A Systemic error that occurred was with the frictionless car as the motion detector took a lot of time to detect the car and we had to measure at which height the car would be detected. This took several pre trails of which none were counted.

Our results from which we got from the lab compared to the gsin? results were not that much different, however there were certain points that did not match up. From my overall look I can say that the design and method of the investigation was good. There were few weaknesses in the lab, such as the motion detector taking time to set up as well as getting it to work properly which may have increased the error. Another weakness was our time management which was not up to par, where in this case we were at times working to fast and rushing a lot as we didn’t have much time left which affected our data greatly.

Another weakness was when averaging the acceleration we only had constant acceleration for about 1 second in which we averaged those numbers together. The precision of the data was decent as our motion detector was quite accurate. For the few weaknesses I had I can say there are simple solutions for them to be avoided next time. With the motion detector I think we could first find a proper height for both the ramp and the car to be placed at and whenever we raised the ramp we would raise the motion detector by the same amount.

Next was the time management where as always we could have stopped rushing and taken our time even though it was scarce, this was because we had to do this lab during a time with constraints. The last weakness was with the acceleration and my solution is to increase the length of the ramp and let the car run for more time and thus we will get a more detailed acceleration. To remove systemic/ random error next time we would have to make sure we have more time for the experiment and set up properly.