investigating motion

• to investigate how mass and force affects acceleration
• 1. set up trolley of known mass with a piece of card on top with a gap in the middle so it will interrupt the signal on the light gate twice. if you measure the length of each bit of card that will pass through the light gate and input this into the software, the light gate can measure the velocity for each bit of card and then work out acceleration of trolley
• 2. connect the trolley to a piece of string that goes over a pulley and is connected on the other side to a hook
• 3. the weight of the hook an any masses attached to it will provide the accelerating force, equal to the mass of the hook x acceleration due to gravity
• 4 - the weight of the hook and masses accelerates both the trolley and the masses
• 5- mark a starting line on the table so that the trolley always travels the same distance as the light gate
• 6- place the trolley on the starting line and release it
• 7- record the acceleration measured by the light gate as the trolley passes through it. The is the acceleration of the whole system. repeat twice more to get an average acceleration
• to investigate the effect of mass, add masses to the trolley one at a time equally. Adding it on the hook effects the force.
• to investigate effects of force, keep total mass of system the same, but change mass on hook, to increase accelerating force. record the average acceleration for each force
• newtons second law says that weight of the hanging masses = mass of the whole system = acceleration of the system. by adding mass to trolley, the force applied stays the same, leading to decrease in acceleration. transferring masses to hook is increasing acceleration force without changing mass of whole system, leading to increase of acceleration of trolley