06-Sept-2015: Deriving a power law for an inertial pendulum

 Finding a relationship between mass and period for an inertial balance

Isaiah Hernandez, Tony Wu, Leslie Zho

September 6, 2016

       Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to find a relationship between mass and period for an inertial balance

       Theory: I believe that the more mass added to the inertial balance will lead to an increases in period because objects with higher masses have more of a resistence. 

       Procedure: We first attached the balance to the table using a c-clamp. The device we used to record the data for our experiment was a photogate. The photogate was set up in front of the balance. A LabPro was set up through the class laptop and hooked up to the photogate. We begun experimenting and recording the period of the intertial balance with no weight and had to increase the weight added by incriments of 100 grams until we hit 800 grams. Afterwards, we executed the experiment using a granola bar and a stapler. We eventually organized our data into a couple of graphs that show the relaptionship between period and mass.   

Data:

Graphs:

Analysis:

Our group created a graph of ln(m + Mtray) v. ln T and found that the value of Mtray was unkown so we plugged in random values into LoggerPro until the correlation of the linear line was as close to the value of 1 as possible. The lower limit came to be 395 grams and the upper limit came to be 440 grams.  

Conclusions:

The power law equation derived in class is an accurate representation of the realtionship between mass and period due to the proportional increase in period and mass shown by the graphs. 

Sources of error in this experiment might have included not placing the masses directly which could lead to an improper and inaccurate reading by the photogate.