Acceleration of free fall experiment with light gate
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- čas přidán 6. 08. 2024
- Data collection for the experiment to determine the acceleration of free fall (often referred to acceleration of gravity or g).
There is a free worksheet to go with this experiment. I recommend that students try doing the analysis themselves - get as much practice as possible! Worksheet available here: www.tes.com/teaching-resource...
This method uses a light gate to measure the time taken for a weighted card to fall through a known height and then the light gate. The time is then used to calculate the mean final velocity of the card. This with the height obeys the relationship v² = u² + 2as (equation 4 of the equations of uniform acceleration, sometimes called suvat equations).
The data is plotted on a graph - v² against h. Then analysed to use the gradient to calculate a value for g. The analysis is done in video 2 ( • Acceleration of Free F... ).
The spreadsheet used for analysis is available here: www.tes.com/teaching-resource...
Measuring accleration of free fall is a mandatory practical for many physics specifications. So this is good practice for OCR physics A, AQA A-Level physics, Edexcel A-Level physics, CPAC, PAG, practical endorsement.
Relevant concepts: acceleration, free fall, motion, measurements, light gate, electronic timer.