Lab 7 Testing Conservation of Energy Worksheet

Your Name: Trey Cross

1. Write a statement of the conservation of energy.

Watch the experiment in the lecture and record all the values

2. Mass of the bob = _____0.3___________kg

3. Diameter of the bob = ____0.4_________m

For each height values, calculate the potential energy of the bob and enter your
results in the table.

4. Use the measured time the bob takes to cross the photo gate to calculate its
speed at that instant and enter those values also in the table.

5. Use the value of the speed to calculate the kinetic energy of the bob at the
instant when it reaches the photo gate.

h (m) U = mgh (J) t (s) v = d/t (m/s) K = mv2 (J)

0.1 0.29 0.0281 1.4 0.29 J
0.15 0.441 0.0203 1.9 0.054
0.2 0.588 0.0197 2.0 0.6

0.25 0.735 0.0121 3.3 0.163

0.3 0.882 0.0073 5.4 0.43

6. Comment on the result of the experiment. Are you satisfied that the experiment
did justice to the principle of conservation of energy?

For the most part I am pleased with the results. However, the last several pieces of
data are much more skewed and further apart than the original than the first few
were. Im not sure if this is due to the human error that can occur during
experiments or simply due to the experiment speaking for itself. However for the
results were very close for the most part so all in all I am satisfied.