Lab Assignment: Free-Fall Acceleration Laboratory:
Analysis
- Organizing Data: For each of the environments, calculate the average velocity. Divide the distance between two time points by the change in time. You might want to create new rows in your spreadsheet with these values. Notice that you will only have five values of average velocity in each location.
- Organizing Data: Using the results from item 1, calculate the average acceleration. Find the change in speed between the first and second time points and the second and third time points and divide this by the change in time. You may want to add another row to your data tables for these calculations. Notice that you will only have four values of average acceleration.
- Constructing Graphs: Use your data to plot the following graphs for each environment. On each graph, label the axes and indicate the trial number.
- Position versus time
- Velocity versus time
- Acceleration versus time
- Organizing Data: Use the values for the average acceleration for all four trials to find the average value.
- Evaluating Results: Use the accepted value for the free-fall acceleration on Earth given in the text and the average of your results from item 4.
- Determine the absolute error of your results using the equation:
relative error = |experimental - accepted| - Determine the relative error of your results using the following equation:
relative error = (experimental - accepted) / accepted
- Determine the absolute error of your results using the equation: