acceleration practical

Question 1

Practical method

Answer 1

• on a table, attach a toy car to a piece of string, the string is looped around the pulley and the other end of the string attached to a 100g mass
• on the desk, draw chalk lines at equal intervals
• hold the toy car at the starting point, and when we’re ready, let go of the car
• because there’s a resultant force acting through the string, the car will accelerate across the bench
• using a timer, record the time that the car passes each distance marker
• repeat the experiment, but each time, decrease the mass on the end of the string (force decreases each time)
• results should show that acceleration of the toy car is proportional to the mass on the other end of the string

Question 2

what will the weight of the mass provide

Answer 2

the force acting on the toy car

Question 3

problems with this practical and how to solve

Answer 3

• if the car is moving rapidly, then it’ll be difficult to record an accurate time.
  
  • to solve this, record the experiment on a phone and play it back slowed down to record the times accurately

Question 4

what do we have to do if we take away some of the mass from the end of the string and why

Answer 4

we have to transfer that mass onto the toy car, we do this to keep the overall mass of the object the same

Question 5

what other experiment can we use this setup for

Answer 5

to investigate how varying the mass of the object affects the acceleration produced by a constant force

Question 6

how varying the mass of the object affects the acceleration produced by a constant force - method

Answer 6

• using the same setup
  1. attach a mass to the toy car
  2. record the car as it accelerates along the bench
  3. repeat the experiment increasing the mass attached to the toy car
  4. we should find that as we increase the mass of the toy car, acceleration decreases