One Dimensional Motion
The purpose of the "One Dimensional Motion" experiment was to use equations of motion in order to determine the gravitational constant g. The idea behind the experiment was to conduct multiple identical tests to collect data and solve for the acceleration of a falling object. My group placed a ruler against a wall and took slow motion videos of a pencil falling from 25cm. We set a timer up next to the ruler so that we could observe the exact falling time of the pencil. Once we had recorded the pencil dropping ten times, we organized and analyzed our data in Google Spreadsheet. With the help of the footage, we were able to determine the distance, time, and velocity of the fall with which we could calculate acceleration. We used the equation Δx = Vo * Δt + 1/2a * ( Δt)^2 to derive an equation for acceleration: 2Δx/t^2 = a. After ten trials, our average acceleration was about 13.17, and the standard deviation was about 1.7. Since the true value of the gravitational constant is about 9.81m/s, the % error of our experiment was about 34%. There are multiple factors that contributed to our solutions and error margin. First, because we were doing the experiment in a classroom it was difficult to ensure that the experiment was conducted exactly the same every time. Additionally, although we did have a stopwatch and were able to determine the time of the fall, it was impossible to be completely accurate when starting/stopping the footage. Overall, while we did not reach the actual gravitational constant, our answers were fairly close and were probably wrong due to unknown errors that were difficult to control in our environment. The spreadsheet below displays all of our data from the experiment and the photo is a screenshot of one of our trials: