Mass Pulley Experiment

In this lab experiment we used the Lego Windstorm motor to lift weights with a pulley. The point of the experiment is to find the speed, acceleration, time and the amount of battery discharge that the robot uses. By setting the power level of the motor will set the toque on the motor wheel which will result in a particular force used to lift the masses.  The higher the power level, the greater the force will be. To find this data we use two methods, by doing it a few times with the power level fixed but changing the mass and by changing the power and then keeping the mass constant.

We first used  Newton’s 2^nd Law i.e.F= ma by keeping the power level fixed and changing the mass.

The acceleration defiantly changes with the mass, and you could see this with the results of this chart bellow.

Here we used the power constant as 75 and we used different wights (mass)

Trial #1:

Speed (RPM): 87.56

Battery Discharge(mv): -14

Mass(kg): 0.25

Time(s): 2.71

Acceleration(RPM/s): 32.34

Then we changed the power level but we left the mass the same

Speed (RPM): 91.56

Battery Discharge (mv): 97

Mass(kg) : 0.2

Power level: 75

Time:2.61

Acceleration(RPM/s): 25.03

We can see that since the mass is the same (0.2) while changing the power level in three trials 75,50 and 100. Each trial’s acceleration depends in its speed.