Nathalie Ortega

Physic 2053L
Professor: Dagoberto Malagon Morejon
09/19/2021
Determining g on an Incline Pre -Lab 04

Preliminary questions:

1.One of the timing devices Galileo used was his pulse. Drop a rubber ball from a height of about 2 m
and try to determine how many pulse beats elapsed before it hits the ground. What was the timing
problem that Galileo encountered?

The timing problem that Galileo faced was that he discovered that the pulse is not a precise timing
tool, because we all have a different pulse rate, according to our body condition, which tends to be
very inconsistent, the time between each pulse may vary. Another important fact is that according to
the calculations, the time it takes for the ball to hit the ground is around 0.638 seconds, and the time
between each pulse is between 0.5 seconds and 1 second. Which means that the time elapsed before
the ball hits the ground may not be adequately enough to count 1 pulse beat. Also, I did this
experiment to check the number of beats and for the 2m drop, I would say there were approximately 2
beats. I say approximately, because the timing is not exact, and it tends to change according to my
body conditions in a specific time.

2.Now measure the time it takes for the rubber ball to fall 2 m, using a watch or clock with a second
hand or second’s display. Did the results improve substantially?

In this second part I used a watch as a tool timing, which was more effective than using the pulse,
because it has a better precision in terms of time. The rubber ball hit the ground approximately 3
seconds, However, the normal time it takes for the ball to hit the ground is less than 1 second (0.6387
sec), which means that the time is not accurate and will not be able to measure the result accurately.
Therefore, the result did not improve substantially.

3.Roll the hard ball down an incline that makes an angle of about 10° with the horizontal. First use
your pulse and then your watch or clock to measure the time of descent.

After having done all the correct procedures, the ball took 2.5 sec to roll down the ramp using the
pulse and the ball took 3.5 s to roll down the ramp, this time was taken using a watch to measure time.
Using the formula below, assuming it is still down 2 m, the time it takes for the ball to roll down the
ramp would now be around 1.5 seconds. Which means that it is still too short to have a good pulse
measurement. After using all these tool timing, the pulse or watch, the time is still inconsistent, which
is too deliberate to arrive at a concrete result based on these methods made by Galileo.
4.Do you think that during Galileo’s day it was possible to get useful data for any of these
experiments? Why?

During Galileo’s day the numbers might have been valuable; however, the units are not exact since
the timing are inconsistent. Also, if the experiment is repeated, consequently you would not get the
same results each time. In other words, this experiment would not give acceptable evidence to support
a hypothesis for an experiment. I believe that the use of pulse and clock during this time have
limitations in obtaining results in the correct data, since the actual result had a very brief time and
using a timing tool that are not very accurate.