Local Acceleration Due to Gravity Lab Report

Henry Zhang

Advanced Physics

October 1, 2018
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Abstract

The rationale behind this lab was to find the relationship that the force of gravity had

on a cart on an inclined plane. In this lab we found the local acceleration due to gravity g by

measuring the acceleration of a cart on an inclined ramp at a specific angle. We measured the

acceleration of an object moving down an inclined plane using Logger Pro motion detectors.

Our resulting value for gravity was g = 10.0 sm2 This value was surprising due to the possible

reasons for error which should have decreased the value for gravity.

Introduction

Throughout this world, it is very well known that if the effects of air resistance are

ignored, any object dropped near Earth’s surface will move with a constant acceleration g.

The direction of g is downwards, towards Earth’s center and it’s magnitude is approximately

9.81 sm2 . The motion of a freely falling objects is one dimensional motion with constant

acceleration.

In this lab, our group solved for the acceleration due to gravity on an inclined plane.

The first step was solving for the equation for acceleration using free body diagrams and

analysis of forces acting on the cart while it was on the inclined plane. The result for the

acceleration a was:
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a = g sin θ

Therefore, from this equation, our group knew what to base our experiment on.

Namely, if one has the means of measuring the angle of the plane and acceleration of the

cart, then the acceleration due to gravity can be easily determined using the equation.

Method

Our experiment consisted of a 0.10m four wheel plastic cart. This cart was held at

the top of a ramp that was at a positive angle to the horizontal. Along the ramp were 2

photogates that were held by clamp stands that were at different heights. When the cart

is released, the cart rolls along the ramp and passes both photogates before being stopped

before it hits the ground. This was performed this 5 times with 3 trials for each angle that

was used.

During the course of the experiment, our group noticed several problems with the

equipment that could result in systematic errors. First of all, the release timing was not

very reliable, causing the cart to start slightly after the timer started. This would result

in shorter elapsed times between photogates and therefore, larger values for g. Secondly,
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there was friction between the cart and the ramp so it wasn’t really friction-less. Our group

were able to minimize the effect of the different time values by releasing the cart a little bit

after the timer had started. This does not completely eliminate the problem but does throw

out the trials which clearly had problems during release. The second problem wasn’t really

minimized in any way so our group just had to stick with a little bit of friction between the

two surfaces which caused a slight deviation between our calculated value of gravity and the

actual value of 9.81 sm2 .

Results and Discussion

Figure 1: Cart Acceleration a vs. Ramp Angle sin θ. The slope of the graph is acceleration

due to gravity.

Inspection of the equation found for the acceleration shows us that the cart’s acceler-

ation a depends linearly on the ramp’s angle sin θ. The slope of this line is local acceleration
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due to gravity. In Figure 1 our group plotted all the data in this way along with the best linear

fit to the data. The slope is determined to be g = 10.0 sm2 while the intercept is ao = −0.224m.

The value of the y-intercept shows systematic errors in our measurement of the starting ac-

celeration of the cart since we expect it to be exactly zero. The accepted value of g, 9.81 sm2

is very similar to the value calculated from the fit to our data. It is however surprising

that our result was actually higher than the accepted value due to the presence of fiction

between the cart and the ramp which would cause a force therefore decreasing acceleration.

Conclusion

The local acceleration due to gravity was measured by timing a released cart on an

angled ramp. The slope or value obtained from graphing our data points was g = 10.0 sm2

which is slightly higher than the accepted value. Due to the potential for human error and

systematic error, the resulting value is quite satisfactory but surprising.

What I have learned from this lab is that gravity always has an important role in

physics and that finding the perfect value of gravity is quite difficult due to many factors in

the lab. Many question arose as I was performing the lab but one of them I was thinking

about for a long time: how did we really calculate the value of gravity to be as precise as to

the hundredth digit when there is air resistance and friction everywhere?

Some follow up experiments that could be performed to find a more accurate value

for gravity than this lab. One that can be done is dropping a ball through a couple of

photogates. This can eliminate the possibility of error due to the friction force on a ramp.
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References

Walker, J., Resnick, R., & Halliday, D. (2014). Halliday & Resnick Fundamentals of Physics

(Tenth edition.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc..