Atwood Machine Lab Report

Stony Brook University Department of Physics and Astronomy PHY 133 L08 Atwood Lab Jake Stearns Lab partner: Robert Kulesza, Ahmed Abbasi TA: Mathieu Boisvert Experiment Date: 1 March 2023 Report Date: 7 March 2023

Introduction The purpose of this lab like many of the other labs we’ve done is to observe Newton’s Second Law of Motion (a force to be equal to the change in momentum per change in time). In the case of this experiment, we used two pairs of increasingly heavier pairs of weights connected to each other on a string that was connected by a pulley system. The wheel at the top of the pulley system had evenly spaced gaps in between each solid part of the wheel that the photogate used to calculate the speed of the system. In this lab, we are mainly measuring the acceleration of each variation of weights used. At the end of the experiment we use our data to once again calculate the value of g, which is the acceleration of gravity on earth. We expected to find that our value of g within uncertainty was the same as the real value of g (9.81m/s^2), and we expected as the weights increased that the acceleration would decrease.

example m1=1000 and m2=5) the acceleration would be 58.81. With these same values, T would be 97.62. Data Quantity Mass 1 Mass 2 (m1-m2)/(m1+m2) Acceleration 1 Acceleration 2 Acceleration 3 Avg. Accel. Uncertainty Unit g g g m/s^2 m/s^2 m/s^2 m/s^2 m/s^2 Trial 1 50 30 0.25 2.359 2.354 2.37 2.361 0.00472581563 Trial 2 60 40 0.2 1.921 1.922 1.926 1.923 0.00152752523 Trial 3 70 50 0.166 1.524 1.586 1.589 1.566 0.02118568699 Trial 4 80 60 0.143 1.337 1.346 1.303 1.329 0.01309580085 Trial 5 100 80 0.111 1.076 1.076 1.08 1.077 0.0013540064 Quantity g Unit Value 9.46086 Uncertainty 0.364644 Calculations The calculations that we conducted in this lab consist of computer-made and human-made calculations. The computer used the photogate to calculate the acceleration for each trail

and calculated g, and the only three types of calculations we did were calculating the (m1-m2)/(m1+m2) value, the average acceleration of each trial, and finding the uncertainty of that acceleration. To calculate the (m1-m2)/(m1+m2) value, we used that exact equation, m1 being the mass of the heavier weight and m2 being the mass of the lighter weight. To calculate the average acceleration of each trial, we added the three accelerations and divided them by 3. The equation used would look like (a1+a2+a3)/3. Finally, to calculate the uncertainty of the average acceleration we used the uncertainty in the average of several measurements formula: Results

increased was also proved to be correct Our data was consistent throughout the experiment and our calculations matched our data. Overall the lab was a success because we were able to find answers to our questions, acquire all necessary data, and observe Newton’s Second Law. 4