Atwoo - 968 Words

Objective: We will determine the acceleration of the weights of an Atwood’s Machine, both experimentally and theoretically. We will attempt to verify Newton’s Second law which is a mathematical statement relating force, mass, and acceleration. Newton’s Second law states that acceleration, a, is directly related to net force, F, and inversely related to mass, m. Naturally this give F=ma. Using the Atwood’s Machine experimental acceleration data (for 10 different runs with 10 different combinations of masses) will be gathered and compared to the theoretical acceleration which is predicted by Newton’s Second Law using a modified version of F=ma. The only two variables in this system system that we will control are the the two masses. We†¦show more content†¦The inversely proportional relationship between total mass and acceleration is also shown in our graph. I took the liberty of plotting the non-constant mass by F vs. aexp. Which clearly showed that with an increase in total mass resulted in a gradual decrease of the acceleration of the system. There were several sources of error in our experiment. But none affected the ability for a relationship between mass, acceleration, force to be drawn. The largest error was the one mentioned above. But its source was the easiest to account for. We mis-imputed the value of the spoke length into DataStudio. Luckley this mistake was easily remedied due to the design of the pulley. The electronic eye was recording a time that was exactly half of what it should have been. This time data produced an acceleration that was exactly double what it should be. Therefore this was issue was easily remedied by dividing the times by 2. Other sources of error were due to the frictional forces in the pulley system, also the masses of the weights might not have been perfect. Air resistance was a major player when the difference in masses was large, therefore acceleration was high. The weights could have b een verified to eliminate that error, and more advanced physics could have been used to take into account the friction of the pulley and the air resistance.