Free Fall and Experiment Uncertainty

Purpose:
The purpose of this lab is to determine and examine the value of gravity when all other external forces are absent. We expect to find this value of acceleration to be 9.81, as the object is in free fall.

Process:
1)To perform this experiment we must set this apparatus up that will mark the falling object as it falls to the ground. The tape attached to the apparatus will mark the distance of the object as it falls in intervals that will give us two graphs. These two graphs are the position vs time graph and acceleration vs time graph, which will be able to allow the calculation of acceleration.There will be a series of dots on the paper that will correspond to the position of the mass as it falls for every 1/60th of a second.

2) We must then place a ruler next to the apparatus and line it up next to the tape, lining the two-meter stick with the 0-cm mark with the highest dot. We will record the position of the object as it falls through each dot respectively.

3) Open Microsoft Excel and then we will enter the data we took and also label our columns as Time, Distance, the change in distance and the change in time and the speed. From our data we will create a graph that will give us these graphs of distance and speed that we desire.

Analysis:
The uncertainty that we can find in our calculations can come from a misreading of the measurements from the tape, or even by our miscalculations of calculating data on excel . The graphs of position and velocity with respect to time can give us the acceleration due to gravity. In order to get the acceleration of these graphs, we must look at the slope of the graphs at a certain point or points. The slope will give us either a tangential value if specifically the slope at one point or the average value at two points. We expect to also find uncertainty to occur because nothing is ideally perfect, but the instruments we are using are expensive and the most accurate tools we can use. Two ways we can express this error is the absolute difference in our calculations, which is the result for acceleration that we got minus the actual acceleration that it is, or relative difference, where we take the value we got minus the actual divided by the actual multiplied 100, which will give us our percentage.

Conclusion:
The experiment led us to be able to use excel and calculate acceleration, along with plotting graphs and also being able to analyze data from graphs to obtain acceleration and realize nothing is ideal and prone to mistake. To make less mistakes is to replicate the experiment multiple times, which will give us a more stable answer.