ballDropExperiment

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course PHY 241

1/09/20122:02 am

Ball Drop

You dropped a ball from a measured and/or estimated height and estimated the time required for it to drop.

Insert a copy of your data here, along with any previously submitted work you wish to include:

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Estimated Meter

Trial One: 0.45 seconds

Trial Two: 0.43 seconds

Trial Three: 0.47 seconds

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What do you think was the percent uncertainty in the measurement of height?

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maybe around 10%, as I was eyeballing it.

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What do you think was the percent uncertainty in the measurement of the time of fall?

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maybe 1%. The increment was very small, but I was using a stopwatch.

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A 1% uncertainty would correspond to .005 seconds, i.e., 5 milliseconds. There is no way a hand-held stopwatch could time an interval between two events with an undertainty of 5 milliseconds (i.e., 1/200 of a second).

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What were the average velocity and, assuming acceleration to have been uniform, the acceleration of the falling ball?

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average velocity: 0.47 m/s

Average acceleration: 0.22 m/s^2

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You didn't report the height from which the ball was dropped. Your result should be obtained based on the time of fall and the distance of the fall.

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The acceleration you report would follow from your stated average velocity and the reported time intervals; however the average velocity seems way too low.

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Based on your uncertainty estimates for time of fall and height, what is the percent uncertainty in the acceleration as you observed it?

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5.5%

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