Modern Galileo Experiment

Experiment: Modern Galileo Experiment
Name: Trevor Gustafson
Partners: Christian Sutherland, Chris Jones
Conducted on: Monday January the 14 starting at approximately 12:20 and ending at approximately 1:45



Preliminary questions

Question #1 - List some observations that led people of Galileo’s time to believe that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects

· Something like a feather floats around in the wind, and takes longer to fall than something like a rock which falls straight down.

Question #2 – Drop a textbook and crumpled piece of paper from the same height at the same time. Do this 3 times. Did the textbook hit first, last, or at the same time consistently?

· Basically at the same time

a): Why did this happen?
The book is denser and thus wants to drop faster, but it also has more inertia to overcome

Question #3 – Try this with a flat sheet of paper and the crumpled piece of paper. Do this 3 times. Did one hit first or last, or did they hit at the same time consistently.

· The crumpled piece of paper hit sooner.

a): Why did this happen?
Because the air/ inertia resistance caused the light piece of paper to take slowly drift down to earth





Analysis

Question #1 - Did each of your experimental graphs resemble their predicted graph? Was your hypothesis correct in each case? If not, why? What could the reason be?

· The graphs were basically how I had predicted?
· Yes it was
Question #2 - Calculate the change in time between each of the points in your data table above. Enter these values in the right column of the data table. Do this for each experiment.
· See data Table 1 “Data collected from pushing a cart on a level surface”
· See data Table 2 “Data collected from releasing a cart on a down hill slope”
· See data Table 3 “Data collected from pushing a cart uphill”

Question #3 – Calculate the change in position between each of the points in your data table above. Enter these values in the right column of the data table. Do this for each experiment.
· See data Table 1 “Data collected from pushing a cart on a level surface”
· See data Table 2 “Data collected from releasing a cart on a down hill slope”
· See data Table 3 “Data collected from pushing a cart uphill”

Question #4 – Calculate the average speed for each portion of the trip. Do this for each experiment.
· See data Table 1 “Data collected from pushing a cart on a level surface”
· See data Table 2 “Data collected from releasing a cart on a down hill slope”
· See data Table 3 “Data collected from pushing a cart uphill”

Question #5 – Plot the data of speed versus time. Do this and answer the questions below for each experiment
· See graph – “CTC’s Straight Data Graph
· See graph – “CTC’s Downhill Data Graph
· See graph – CTC’s Uphill Data Graph

a): Is there a general trend pattern in the data? If so, describe it
*

b): Describe what is happening to the speed during the experiment.
· During the level experiment, the cart slowly slowed down.
· During the downhill experiment, the cart steadily speed up
· During the uphill experiment, the cart steadily slowed down












Question for Chris-
Do we need to right a formal hypothesis or is our predicted graph our hypothesis? Where would we write a hypothesis?

In Questions 2-3 we’re just supposed to reference the table right?

Question 4 is only concerning each portion and not the average of the whole trip, right?

We should number our graphs