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PHY 201
Your 'collaborative labs' report has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.
** Collaborative Labs_labelMessages.txt **
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You have completed the first series of collaborative labs.
In that series you developed some important skills with teamwork, collaboration and communication. By now you have also developed additional lab techniques and insights, as well as an expanded understanding of physics and the standard formulations of motion, energy, momentum, forces and other topics.
You now have a good idea of the function of each member of the team, the designer, the experimenter, the analyzer and the interpreter.
You are also familiar with the items in your lab materials package.
The second series of activities will be spread out over the remainder of the semester. The investigations in this series will be more substantial and extensive than those of the first series, though we will limit the scope to keep the workload reasonable.
Please give a brief statement of three proposals for the second series of investigations, relevant to the topics of the labs you have performed and/or the material covered so far in the course. It should be possible to conduct your proposed investigations using the materials in the lab package, and/or common items you can expect your team members to have.
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Discuss your first idea. How do you think it might be tested? What sort of items do you think might be required? How do you think your idea might be tested?
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An experiment to see that the angular velocity of a pendulum is independent of the mass. Do the experiment multiple times with different masses and find out that the angular velocity is the same as long as L is the same.
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The angular velocity of the pendulum actually differs from extreme point to equilibrium point, angular velocity being the number of degrees per second.
For small amplitudes, the maximum angular velocity (or if you prefer the maximum velocity) is proportional to the amplitude (or, your choise, the angular amplitude) of the motion. For amplitudes approaching the maximum possible amplitude (pi/2 for angular amplitude, the length L for amplitude) the proportionality no longer holds. It would be possible to test this.
Your intent might have been to test angular frequency, rather than angular amplitude, which would also be a good investigation.
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Discuss your second idea. How do you think it might be tested? What sort of items do you think might be required? How do you think your idea might be tested?
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The bridge experiment with the rubberbands could be expanded to show how that if additional force is applied to the bridge, for example too heavy of a truck, how the material supporting the bridge could fail. Of course there would have to be some strength of the materials given in the lab.
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The strength of the materials could, of course, be investigated as part of the experiment. That would make the experiment too long, but it would be interesting to design this so that two groups could collaborate on doing the two parts.
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Discuss your third idea. How do you think it might be tested? What sort of items do you think might be required? How do you think your idea might be tested?
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An experiment to show that a smaller moment of Inertia will result in a greater angular velocity. Have a person sit in a chair that can spin holding their arms straight out and then after they start spinning pull their arms in. Measure the rotations and time them to determine the velocity.
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Also a very good idea. If there was a way to provide a constant angular impulse, we would have a good control with which to compare results.
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Very good. Check my notes.
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