Rolling A Ball Down An Inclined Plane - 2222 Words

Rolling a Ball Down an Inclined Plane Year 12 Physics Ben Mitchell 4/25/2016 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Results 6 Discussion 8 Conclusion 11 Appendix 12 Bibliography 15* Introduction Suppose a ball is released from a distance and rolls down an inclined plane, as shown in figure 1. At the bottom of the inclined plane, the ball strikes a level tabletop and bounces away. The inclined plane may be rotated to give a steeper angle, which will affect the time of travel across the tabletop. The ball’s horizontal component of velocity is (Walding, Rapkins and Rossiter, 2004, pg. 62): v_x = v cos ÃŽ ¸ Figure 1: Experiment set up. Red indicates acting forces, green indicates velocity. As the ball bounces across the tabletop, the horizontal component of velocity (vx) will remain unchanged, assuming no kinetic energy is lost. The vertical component of the velocity (vy), force normal of the tabletop and the force of gravity will not affect the horizontal motion of the ball. Therefore, the value of vx at the bottom of the inclined plane determines the time of travel across the table, and the maximum value of vx gives the minimum time of travel. The relationship between the velocity and ÃŽ ¸ can be determined through the conservation of energy, assuming all potential energy it transferred into kinetic energy. GPE=KE (Walding, Rapkins and Rossiter, 2004, pg.226; http://www.phys.ufl.edu, 2016) mgh=1/2 mv^2 This simplifies to v= √2gh The height can be foundShow MoreRelatedPhysics Principles Of Dynamics And Rotational Kinematics882 Words   |  4 Pagesequal amounts of time, however, he was unable to test this theory, as he could not accurately measure an object free-falling through space. In order to rectify this, he attempted to slow down the objects motion by using a ball rolling down an inclined plane.1 By using a water clock, and measuring the distance the ball had travelled, Galileo was able to determine that the â€Å"spaces traversed were to each other as the squares of the times.†2 From this, he was able to calculate the acceleration due to gravityRead MoreDetermining G on an Incline Essay982 Words   |  4 Pagesfreely falling objects. Unfortunately, his timing devices were not precise enough to measure the free fall time directly. He decided to â€Å"dilute† gravity by using fluids, inclined planes, and pendulums. Galileo’s idea of diluting gravity using inclined planes worked like this: the acceleration of a rolling cart on an inclined plane is small, therefore is easy to measure; when the angle of the incline gets bigger, the acceleration will get bigger; by measuring the dependence of the acceleration on theRead MoreAncient Egyptian Pyramids Architecture1566 Words   |  7 Pages one can conclude that the Ancient Egyptians most likely utilized a combination of sledges and simple machines to create the Great Pyramids. Sledges that carried the blocks of the pyramids would be used to transport material while levers and inclined planes were used to place the blocks in such a precise manner. Construction of the different pyramids was seen under several different pharaohs, as they were built as tombs (History Channel HD 2015), by a collective Ancient Egyptian group. For exampleRead MoreIssacs Newton Laws Of Motion2123 Words   |  9 Pagesphilosophers. A ball on the ground, when given a small hit, does not move forever. Such observations suggest that rest is the â€Å"natural state† of an object. This remained the belief until Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton developed an entirely different approach to understand motion. FIRST LAW OF MOTION By observing the motion of objects on an inclined plane Galileo deduced that objects move with a constant speed when no force acts on them. He observed that when a marble rolls down an inclined plane, its velocityRead MoreHorinzontal1829 Words   |  8 Pageswe need to slow down the action. Galileo was the first to accurately measure this acceleration due to gravity. By rolling objects down an inclined plane, he slowed the motion enough to establish that the gravitational acceleration is uniform, or constant with time. Inclined Plane Experiment !Does the marble pick up speed as it rolls? !Is it moving faster at the bottom of the incline than it was halfway down?  Flashes of a stroboscope illuminate a falling ball at equal time intervalsRead More The Scientific Method Essay1173 Words   |  5 Pagessame amount of time, as his hypothesis led to. Since his hypothesis failed, he made a new one, which proposed that the rate at which an object falls is directly proportional to the time the object has spent falling. This was tested by rolling balls down an inclined plane and calculating the speed and time values from those observations. Later, these experiments led to the discovery of the gravitational constant g, and a better understanding of the Scientific Method. The Method has been used manyRead MoreSir Isaac Newton: Standing on the Shoulders of Galileo and Aristotle1454 Words   |  6 Pages and his insightful works eventually became well known and followed. Aristotelianism dominated over the European mind since his time all the way up the Middle Ages (Lizhi, F., Youquan, C., 1987). Aristotle believed that the earth looked like a ball in the center of the universe and divided the space of the universe into two parts, using the moon as the dividing line. The sun, stars, planets, and anything ‘above the moon’ were in succession around the earth, all on different layers of the ‘celestialRead More Galileo: The Father of Science Essay examples1798 Words   |  8 PagesGalileo is that he dropped balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The balls were of different masses to demonstrate that their velocity of descent was independent of their mass excluding the limited effect of air resistance. This was different than what Aris totle taught: that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones, in direct proportion to weight. Galileo did however perform experiments involving rolling balls down inclined planes, which proved the same thing: falling or rolling objects are acceleratedRead MoreEssay on Homework #3 Solutions2624 Words   |  11 Pages2012 HOMEWORK #3 Due Monday July 2, 2012 1 James Bond (90 kg), outï ¬ tted with perfectly matching skis and skiware, is at the top of a steep slope that a secret spy like him can easily handle. He lets himself go from rest and smoothly slides down the h = 15 m high hill. A big parking lot lies at the bottom of the hill. Since the parking area has been cleared of snow, the friction between the ground and the skis brings our hero to a halt at point D, located at a distance d = 12 m from pointRead MoreGalileo Galilei, Astronomer/Mathematician5105 Words   |  21 Pagestechnology of the 1600s. According to Koyrà ©, the law was arrived at deductively, and the experiments were merely illustrative thought experiments. Later research, however, has validated the experiments. The experiments on falling bodies (actually rolling balls) were replicated using the methods described by Galileo (Settle, 1961), and the precision of the results was consistent with Galileos report. Later research into Galileos unpublished working papers from as early as 1604 clearly showed the reality