Lab partners: Charles, Anthony
Date performed: 09/28/16
For this lab, a wooden rotating disk was set up in the back of the room for us to observe. To determine a relationship between centripetal acceleration (force) and angular speed, we ran and compared the experiment at varied radii, voltages, and masses. Each run ran for a total of 10 rotations (1 rotation for each time the piece of tape on rim of disk passed through the photogate). The attached force sensor relayed data onto Logger Pro, from which we got our values for force.
Setup of rotating disk with force sensor at center and mass attached
Looking at the equation for centripetal force:
Fcentripetal = mrω^2
You can see that centripetal force is directly related to the mass, radius, and angular velocity of the object rotating. This means that if any of the factors on the right increase, then the centripetal force on the left would consequently increase as well. Additionally, if any of those factors decreased, then the force would also decrease.
First, we ran the experiment a couple times with varied radii. The mass was set at 200g and the voltage at 6.1 volts. We started with a radius of 19cm, and increased with random increments all the way up to 54cm. Here is an example of what the data looked like on logger pro:
Logger Pro view: Recorded data with 200g of mass, 6.1 volts, and 28.5cm radius
We then repeated this process with varied voltages, and finally varied masses. In our lab, a mass was attached by a string to the force sensor that was adorned at the center of the rotating disk.
Excel sheet of data
As expected, the force increased with each increase in radius, voltage, and mass. This experiment proved our guess that the force of centripetal acceleration is directly related to the mass, radius, and angular speed of a rotating object.
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