For this weeks Wednesday lab groups had the opportunity to design their own experiment. The only guidelines were to use coffee filters and we needed to determine if the coffee filters fell with a changing acceleration, constant acceleration or a constant speed. My group members and myself decided to test these by dropping one coffee filter and then four coffee filters stacked together both from 1.5 meters off the ground. With our coffee filter experiment we placed the motion dectetor on the ground with the laptop on the table. We used logger pro to collect out data and create graphs using the data we collected. Once we had all of our equipment set up, we discussed that we should drop several coffee filters stuck together to avoid the coffee filters from fluttering so much. I dropped the four stuck together coffee filters from chest height, 1.5 meters from the ground directly above the motion detector. We repeated this process with only one coffee filter.
The first part of this vine shows myself dropping only one coffee filter and the second time is me dropping four coffee filters stuck together.
(One filter)
(Four filters)
The graph shows that the coffee filters started with fast acceleration once released but right before the coffee filters hit the motion detector there was a decrease in acceleration. With both one coffee filter and four coffee filters there is a change in acceleration but there is not a constant speed or acceleration. As a group we decided that there is a change is acceleration, the speed is constant and at the end of the filter falling there is a decrease in acceleration.
There are uncertainties in every experiment ever performed. In our experiment the uncertainties include inaccurate measuring from the ground to the release point of the coffee filter but this can be detected by the motion detector, and the motion detector picking up other objects in the room or in our groups case not dropping the filters directly above the motion detector. We can connect this week’s lab back to the first lab we did because we analyzed height, position, velocity, and acceleration. In lab four using the coffee filters and in lab one using the aircarts we can concur for both objects there was a change in acceleration.
dezeraphysics 