Newton’s Three Laws of Motion have revolutionized the way we describe the relationship between force and motion. His Three Laws of Motion can be applied to everything in our world and they will all confirm his theories. During our past lectures we decided to test the accuracy of Newton’s Second Law of Motion. His second Law states that , The Force (measured in Newtons) is equal to an objects mass times its acceleration (measured in Kg and m/s2 respectfully). We used a Lego robot motor to lift a small weight that was attached to a string that was placed on a pulley. Once again we used the Labview programming software with prewritten code. Down below you can see the physical setup of the experiment and a copy of the code that we executed.
For the first experiment, we kept the power level fixed at 75 and we changed the mass on each trial in order to conclude how acceleration is affected by these two variables.
By analyzing the data and the graph we can come to the conclusion that if force is fixed and the mass is increased it will result in the acceleration being decreased. This is because mass and acceleration are inversely proportional. As one is increased the other one has to decrease under the assumption that the force is fixed.
For the second experiment we took a similar approach to the first experiment except were keeping the mass fixed at one value for all trials. For all three trials we kept the mass at 0.17 Kg and we changed the power level, which we were considering as our force variable.
As demonstrated in the graph and in the data points, if we keep the mass fixed, the power level increases as the force is increased. Force and acceleration are directly proportional, so as one increases the other must increase as well. This can also be seen in the graph by the linear trend line that goes very close to each data point.
For the next two experiments we decided to focus around the Laws of Conservation of Energy. We measured the height that the motor would have to lift the mass to and estimated the potential energy of all our trials throughout the whole experiment.
After measuring the height, and calculating the Potential Energy we decided to investigate the relationship between mass and battery discharge while keeping the power level fixed. While keeping the power level fixed at 75 we observed that as the mass is increased the battery discharge increases as well. Both variables are directly proportional.
For the last experiment we analyzed the relationship between Power level (Force) and Power (Watts). We calculated Power (Watts) by using the equation: Powerused = Potential Energy / Time.
Looking at this graph we can conclude that Power Level (Force) and Power (Watts) are directly proportional. The greater the Power Level, the greater the Power used by Motor is. This relationship is so evident that our R2 value is 0.99966. The closer R2 is to 1, the better the best fit line accurately represents the data and their relationship.
In Conclusion, the Mass-Pulley Experiment was a greater way to see Newton’s Second Law of Motion and the Law of Conservation of Energy in action! This experiment is so closely related to Energy and Efficiency because Energy revolves very closely around Newton’s three Laws of Motion and Conservation of Energy. We all know that Energy cannot be destroyed or created, it just converts itself into heat or sound or other forms. One of the biggest problems is how to become more efficient by taking lost energy (that is another form) and capturing it and inputting it back into the system. As we saw by the experiments, an object needs a force in order to be put in motion and a heavier object needs just as much force. More force needs more watts (in mechanical systems) in order to operate. We must think of ways to use less power to output the same amount of force.