Goal and Object

The goal of this activity is studying about Newton’s second law of motion. During the activity, we had been exploring the Newton’s second law, the law of conservation of energy, velocity and acceleration, and power.

For the experiment, we had to use  Lego Mindstorm motor to lift weights, a pulley, and the masses.

Experiment process

• Plug the USB cable into Lego Mindstorm motor and computer
• Balance the motor and masses through a pulley
• Then we measure the height from the bottom the the top of pulley. The height is 31.6 cm = 0.316m
• Set up a table for 2 tests; 5 times for each.
• Open the program in Window software and begin to add number
• Press Start to run the motor
• For the 1st test, we use the same force with different masses. We chose 50 N for the force, one after another, 0.25 kg, 0.23 kg, 0.21 kg, 0.15 kg, 0.1 kg. Next, we calculated the Potential Energy = mgh. Then we come up with this result

• For the 2nd test, we use the different force, 100 N, but in the same masses as the test one from the small to large, 0.1 kg, 0.15 kg, 0.21 kg, 0.23 kg, 0.25 kg. Also, we used the same equation for Potential Energy. After that, we come up with the result like this.

Also, this is a picture and video that show how the process works

Conclusion

Even though we can collect all the data in this experiment, we though that there would be some mistake because the graph is really weird on the second test. Nevertheless, this activity helped us to learn about Newton’s second law and how to use equation to apply in the experiment.