What is Picket Fence in physics lab?
The Photogate has a beam of infrared light that travels from one side to the other. It can detect whenever this beam is blocked. You will drop a piece of clear plastic with evenly spaced black bars on it, called a Picket Fence.
How can we use a Picket Fence to determine the acceleration due to gravity on Earth?
Knowing the distance between the leading edge of each opaque band, the Capstone program calculates the average speed of the picket fence from one band to the next. The slope of the graph of average speed versus time can be used to determine the acceleration of the falling object.
How do you do a free fall Lab?
Description of Procedure: Students use a motion detector to detect the motion of a soccer ball. Once the motion detector is started and the ball is held for a couple of seconds, it is dropped and falls to the ground. The data can be represented upon a velocity‐time graph.
What is the slope of AV vs T graph for a free falling object?
Since the slope of any velocity versus time graph is the acceleration of the object (as learned in Lesson 4), the constant, negative slope indicates a constant, negative acceleration.
Does initial velocity affect acceleration in free fall?
3. Initial velocity is independent of the slope of the graph; that is, the acceleration. An object thrown downward still accelerates after release at the same rate as an object that is dropped.
Does the initial velocity of an object in free fall have anything to do with the acceleration due to gravity?
Acceleration from gravity is always constant and downward, but the direction and magnitude of velocity change. At the highest point in its trajectory, the ball has zero velocity, and the magnitude of velocity increases again as the ball falls back toward the earth (see figure 1).
What is the purpose of free fall Lab?
The purpose of this laboratory activity is to measure the acceleration of a falling object assuming that the only force acting on the object is the gravitational force.
What is a free-fall in physics?
free-fall, in mechanics, state of a body that moves freely in any manner in the presence of gravity. The planets, for example, are in free-fall in the gravitational field of the Sun. Newton’s laws show that a body in free-fall follows an orbit such that the sum of the gravitational and inertial forces equals zero.
What factors affect free fall acceleration?
The acceleration of the object equals the gravitational acceleration. The mass, size, and shape of the object are not a factor in describing the motion of the object. So all objects, regardless of size or shape or weight, free fall with the same acceleration.
What is the purpose of the picket fence free fall lab?
The purpose of the Picket Fence Free Fall Lab was to examine the acceleration of objects as they fall to earth. During free-fall the only force that should be acting upon the object is the earth’s gravitational pull (9.8 m/s/s), therefore the velocity of the object should always equal 9.8 m/s/s.
Can a picket fence free fall through a photogate?
In this lab, students generate velocity vs. time graph for a picket fence free-falling through a Photogate. Then, students will use their graphs to determine the acceleration due to gravity.
Why does a picket fence not fall down?
This is due to the fact that the fence is fighting gravity as it is thrown upward, as opposed to free falling because of the pull of gravity. The purpose of the Picket Fence Free Fall Lab was to examine the acceleration of objects as they fall to earth.
How fast does a picket fence fall?
In this lab the picket fence was dropped repeatedly through a photogate connected to Logger Pro, which allowed the fence’s acceleration and velocity to be recorded and graphed. The results of the experiment confirmed the theory that objects will fall with a constant acceleration equal to g (9.8 m/s/s).