Back at it Again in Physics (Ramp Angle and Acceleration Lab)

Well, it's the end of the quarter and midterms are next week, so I guess it means it's that time again to start cranking out these blogs.  To do this, we have to go all the way back to November 5th when we did the Ramp Angle vs. Acceleration Lab.  This lab was to see that if an object was placed on a ramp with no friction, how would the acceleration change in comparison to the angle of the ramp.  Based on what we know and that the fastest would be 90 degrees (free fall) and the slowest was 0 degrees (stationary), we made a hypothesis saying it was linear.  However, this lab was different from most because soon after we realized, what if the angle is increased over 90 degrees, them the acceleration starts to go back down.  We had to do the lab to find the right equation to compare the two variables, so to do so we downloaded an app on our phone to find the level of the ramp, and we used carts to simulate an object with no friction.  We also used motion sensors to gather the data for what the acceleration was at different levels.  Below is the picture of our group hard at work gathering data during this lab.

As we worked through it we figured we were right with what we thought would happen.  As the angle rose from 0 degrees to 90 degrees, so did the acceleration, however it wasn't quite linear, but at the same time it wasn't quite quadratic or a square root graph either.  We didn't know what to do with the data until our teacher came by and explained the situation to us.  We actually had to insert a sin graph in with the data to fit our points which is something we haven't seen in a physics lab before, yet it made sense as when the angle gets above 90 degrees a sin graph would also start a downward trend until it gets to the stationary 180 degrees.  After having this epiphany we put all the data on a whiteboard and got our equation to discuss what we learned with the rest of the class.

Our final numbers showed the equation that acceleration was equal to 10 x sin (0.0159 x degrees).  In addition to this we tried to find where the 0.0159 comes from and it turns out it is close to pi divided by 180 which converts from radians to degrees on the computer.  With that and the 10 being the acceleration of force of the earth on the object (g), the final equation is a = g x sin(θ).  To learn more, you can see a video I made about the forces acting on an object at rest on an inclined plane and accelerating down on an inclined plane at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mte2JCFTht0.  Thanks for visiting, and until next time... in about 20 minutes.