Ball+on+Incline-+Shaunak+and+Coleman

Title of Lab: Ball on Incline

Researchers: Sam Shaunak and Peyton Coleman

Research Question: How does the time for a tennis ball to roll down on an incline relate to the distance it travels?

Research: The ball on an incline lab starts by recording the distance and time. Since the measurement of "a" can be calculated and the Vi is zero, we think that the kinematic equation Δx= Vi*t +.5at^2 is used to find the relationship between time(t) an d distance(Δx).

Hypothesis: Because the variables x, t, a, and Vi are given, we manipulated the kinematics formula that includes those variables, Δx= Vi*t +.5at^2, and we came up with the formula 2Δx/g*sinƟ=t^2 by solving for t^2 to represent the relationship between distance and time of a rolling ball.

Procedure: 1. Set incline at angle measure between 10-20 degrees (we used 17 degrees) 2. Drop tennis ball five times and record the time it takes to reach the end of the incline 3. Repeat step 2 at different centimeter measurements. (we used increments of 10 cm and changed the distance five times) Materials used- tennis ball, incline, protractor with string and weight attached, stopwatch

Data:


 * Distance(cm) || Time(s) ||
 * 80 || .85 ||
 * 70 || .78 ||
 * 60 || .69 ||
 * 50 || .59 ||
 * 40 || .50 ||

Data Analysis:

By using the distance of 80cm and 70cm, we found the slope of 7s/m or .07s/cm. We plugged in our values to check our theory against our data with the variable of distance at 80cm. For 80cm our theory came up with .745s yet our data showed that t^2 at 80cm is .7225s; this yields a percent difference of just over 3.1%.

Conclusion: The experiment supports our hypothesis that the distance the ball travels and the time it takes to roll down the incline squares are squared form a linear relation. The experiment can be improved possibly by expanding the disance travelled over 100 cm and having better quality inlcclines to use.