Experiment 5 Questions

Question 1:

Answer:

The slope of the ramp is its rise divided by its run.

• For small slopes the run is very close to the ramp length; the rise is the difference in elevation from one end to the other.

Question 2:

How are you suppose to use the function T=A*L^P? I am not really sure how to time with the pendulum either.

Answer:

Your pendululm function was something like T = 2 L^.5, where T is the period in seconds and L is pendulum length in meters.

• Remember that 2 was 10^y0, where y0 was the y intercept of the log T vs. log L graph.  .5 was the slope of that graph.

So for example, using T = 2 L^.5, a pendulum of length 15 cm would have L = .15 and its period would be

• period = T = 2 * .15^.5 (a little less than .8 seconds--check it out and be sure you are doing the calculation right; don't forget order of operations, where exponentiation precedes multiplication).

Note:

The following figure shows accel (cm/s^2) vs. ramp slope as calculated by one one individual (relevant mostly to that individual).  The slope of the best-fit straight line is 193 cm/s^2, which is much lower than the expected 980 cm/s^2 acceleration of gravity.  The ramp slopes vary from .07 to .39, which is much more than the specified range of .04 to .1.

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