According to Wikipedia, Newton’s second Law of Motion is “the acceleration of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F and inversely proportional to the mass m, i.e., F = ma”. You might ask yourself, “What does that mean?” I certainly had no understanding of this before our lab last Monday. In the lab, we connected robots to our computers, and to a pulley system. We studied the amount of energy needed to lift weights on the pulley. The energy source was a fully charged battery. The below image shows the exact pulley system we used.
In the experiment, we altered the amount of weight used on the pulley, and using the Lab View computer program we were able to adjust the power levels to lift the weights, seen in the image below.
We discovered that less weight made the pulley go faster, as did higher power levels when the weight was unchanging. Likewise, heavier weights and lower power levels slowed it down. After collecting the data, it was transferred to a Microsoft Excel template, shown in the image below.
We then arranged the first four attempts that had the same amount of weight and different power levels, and the last four have different weights but the same power level. After this, we put it all into several graphs. My group had difficulty with this step, as some of our information was initially copied incorrectly. Luckily, our professor came to the rescue and helped us fix the problem and get our graphs working correctly. After examining the graphs, I finally began to understand how our results related to Newton’s second law, and how force and mass affect the amount of energy needed for movement to occur.
Nice idea to use the screen-shots of the experiment taken place…I also liked how you introduced the entry with a general question about science and linked it back to the experiment’s results.