Atwood Machine Lab Report

Joe Bozzelli, Jordan Crawford, Elijah Hollings, Marc Tennant

ABSTRACT:
We were asked the question, How fast would a car accelerate if there was a car at one
end of a string and a weight at the other end? First, we had to find the gravity force and normal
force of both the car and weight (but, the weight was in the air so we just had to find
gravitational force) Second, we calculated each force and got 7.61 for the gravitational and
normal force of the car and we also got .19 for the gravitational force for the weight. Third, we
got rid of the normal and gravitational force of the car since the cancel out (even though we did
that and didnt need it, its always nice to know what it is). Finally, we used the formula F/m=a
and got .24M/S^2.

PROCEDURES:
First, we had to find out what the masses were for each car. Mr. Ross told us it was 0.761
for the car and 0.019 for the weight. Second, we knew we had to find out that what the normal
force and gravitational force for both the car and weight. Our group knew that the force of
gravity was 10 m/s^2. So the force of gravity and normal force was 7.61N and the force of
gravity and normal force for the weight was 0.19. Third, we had to throw out the gravitational
and normal force data for the car because they cancel each other out. Fourth, we had to calculate
the acceleration with the formula F/m=a and since the gravitational and normal force cancel out
for the car, the equation would be 0.19/761=0.24m/s^2. Fifth, we went up to ask Mr. Ross if we
could test out our result. He asked us a few questions before we started and he said we should go
back to our table and try to find the tension in the rope. We went back to our table and tried
everything but we could but couldnt find the tension. So we went back and told him that the
rope was too small so the tension wouldnt affect the the experiment. Mr. Ross said we were
correct and said we could do the experiment. He pulled back the car and started the wave tracker
(I forget what its really called). He let go of the car and the graph came up after the car reached
the end of the line. Mr. Ross then showed us that the actual acceleration was .22m/s^2 instead of
.24m/s^2.


DATA:
Fn and Fg for the car is .761 times 10 =7.61n and we did the same for the force of gravity
as well, but with .019n in place of .761 and got .19n for the weight. And after we found the force
of gravity for both of the objects, we divided .19n and .761n and we got .24m/s^2 and that was
our answer. But when we went to go check with Mr.Ross and found out it was .22m/s^2 not
.24m/s^2.


CONCLUSION:
What we learned during the experiment is that the acceleration should be around 0.24.
But we did almost meet that goal. Our final conclusion we got was rounded to 0.22. Our first
prediction was 0.243. Important information we learned was that instead of the usual 10 m/s^2,
the force of gravity was actually 9.8m/s^2 which changed our supposed final conclusion 0.243 to
0.22.

DISCUSSION:
Our results were really valid. We had some difficulties finding the overall mass and the
acceleration. We had the wrong masses at first, but it was a good thing we didnt have any of the
measurements correct yet. We calculated our overall force the first time without finding the
tension on the rope. We threw out our old data and redid the formula with the correct
measurements and got a answer that was a little bit higher than the actual answer. The actual
measurement taken by the sonar was 0.22 m/s^2, and our measurement was 0.24 m/s^2. Mr.
Ross told us afterward that the force of gravity is 9.8 m/s^2 instead of 10 m/s^2 so that could
have thrown off our data by a few points. In the future we can use the correct force of gravity so
we can get a closer measurement.