Andrew Ajaka

Mr. Duncan

AP Physics- Periods 5 and 6

Due: Friday, November 4th, 2016

Dot Timer Lab Report

For this lab, we began by first taking a rather long piece of paper, setting it vertically, and

attaching it, by a piece of tape, to a 200-gram weight. We then fed the paper through a machine

that would make dots in the paper at a constant rate of 1 dot per 1/40th of a second, and let the

weight and paper go.

We dropped this weight to see whether or not we could measure the change in velocity

over constant increments of time and whether there was a relationship between the change in

velocity in the vertical distance and the distance between the dots. In hindsight, we are able to

deduce that what our group was actually trying to test whether, with these tools, we could
Displacement away from
measure the acceleration due to gravity
Time (1/40th of a second) ( ( the previous dot (in cm)
1 0.75 and whether or not it was constant
2 1.35
3 1.8 regardless of the weight.
4 2.4
5 3.1 As we took a look at our data,
6 3.65
we first were able to see that the
7 4.2
8 4.9 distance between the dots was
9 5.4
10 5.9 increasing. This immediately told us
11 6.6
that the velocity was changing, and,
12 7.15
13 7.6 after closer inspection, we could see
14 8.3
15 8.9 that the velocity was increasing, since
 the distance between the dots was increasing, which we could see from the graph of the position

of the dots from the first distinguishable dot (last page) , as it was not a linear relationship, and

the trend curve had a slope that was increasing as time progressed. In

order to check whether our observation was true, we decided to try

and find the average velocity over each 1/40th of a second. We used

Displacement
the equation, V avg = , plugging in the distance between
Time

each pair of dots for the displacement, and the increment of time. A

sample of this can be seen to the right. After repeating this process for

every 1/40th of second, we were able to make a chart

Time (1/40th of a Average Velocity
second) (cm/s) (on the left) where we organized the average velocity
1 30
2 54 and the time. We then took this information and put it
3 72
4 96 on a set of axis (last page), putting a best fit line
5 124
through our data. Through our best fit line, we could
6 146
7 168 immediately discern a positive trend, in which as time
8 196
9 216 advanced, the average velocity increased. We decided
10 236
11 264 that we would then take this best fit line, and find the
12 286
slope of it, using two points on our best fit line, and we
13 304
14 332 found that the acceleration provided by letting go of
15 356

the cm cm cm
∆V avg 175 −25 150
Slope= s s s cm
m ∆ Time a= 7.5 s−1 s = 6.5 s =923.08 2
weight was approximately 9.23 2 . This
s
s
cm m
allowed us to deduce that, in regards to this a=923.08 2
a=9.23 2
s s
experiment, the acceleration due to gravity of
 m m
objects is 9.23 2 , even though this is not exactly the 9.18 2 that is widely accepted in the
s s

physics community due to errors and uncertainty in our experiment and collection of data as a

whole. Examples of these errors may include the assumption that air resistance was negligible

when dropping the weight or accidental corruption of the dotting process as the weight fell by

perhaps touching the weight and stopping it from descending at the accepted acceleration due to

gravity, as these changes inhibit our data from being completely accurate. Examples of

uncertainty in this experiment include the fact that our measurement is restricted to the ticks

found on a ruler, meaning that we can’t get the exact distance between the points, as well as the

fact that when reading the graph, we are not able to get the exact values of which the best fit line

passes through, meaning that in

calculating our slope, we may be off

incrementally, both of which could

possibly change our answer

drastically. Finally, we calculated the percent error (shown to the left) between our answer and

the accepted result by physicists every, and it was 0.54%. This means that, even though we had

several forms of errors and uncertainty, we were still rather close to the accepted value for the

acceleration due to gravity.

 Position away from the first distinguishable dot (in cm)
80

70
Position away from the first distinguishable dot (in cm)

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Time (1/40th of a second)

Average Velocity over Time

400

350

300
Average Velocity (cm/s)

250

200

150

100

50

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Time (1/40th of a second)