1 Mechanics

Falling and Bouncing Objects

To record the motion (position, velocity, and acceleration) of a vertically falling and bouncing ball. The extract the object's acceleration. 

Equilibrium of a Rigid Body

To explore the conditions for equilibrium of suspended meter stick set-up in symmetrical and non-symmetrical fashion.

Rotational Motion

To study the effect of constant torque on a symmetrical body - vertically rotating disk. To measure the angular velocity vs. time and to calculate the disk's moment of dynamic inertia. To check the conservation of energy principle for the system.

Conservation of Linear Momentum and (Sometimes) Energy

To verify the conservation of momentum principle for inelastic and elastic collisions of dynamic carts. To compare the total initial and final energy in both types of collisions. 

What is Energy?

To investigate various forms of energy. To explore various ways that energy can be transferred between objects. To design and perform an experiment to explore some aspect of energy using white boards.

What Causes the Accelerated Motion?

To design and perform an experiment to investigate forces and/or motion using materials available at individual stations (6 in total). To present and explain the experimental results to the class using white boards

Motion in 2D

Toss of light and heavy balls recorded on videotape, digitized, and compared with spreadsheet simulations. To introduce the concepts of Y(x) trajectories with variable force (air drag ), parametric plot, Euler method, fit of coupled parameters, RMS residuals.

What is Motion?

To investigate motion of a dynamic cart on horizontal track; the emphasis on constant velocity motion. generate graphs of position vs. time, velocity vs. time and acceleration vs. time. To create a model for predicting the future and past positions of an object moving horizontally.

Graphing

To make graphs of a single measurement and the average of 3 measurements of the height bounced as a function of the level from which the ball was dropped.