Galileo Case

Introduction

When gravity was first discovered, Galileo wanted to measure the velocity and acceleration of various objects, but he found that they moved to quickly for him to measure. In order to overcome this, he experimented by sliding an object down an incline. This inclined plane is what can be used to test Newton's second law that states:

a=Fnet/m (1)

In this equation, a represents the acceleration of the object, while m represents the mass and Fnet represents the net force acting on the object. While this equation proves to be very useful, it is quite difficult to measure acceleration experimentally. The instantaneous velocity of an object can be used to calculate its acceleration as seen in the following equation:

a=(v^2-v_0^2)/2x (2)

Here, a is, once again, the acceleration of the object and x is its distance while v is the final velocity of the object and? v?_0^ is the initial velocity of the object.

Instantaneous velocity in this particular experiment will not be truly "instantaneous" but rather an average velocity of a very short time. This velocity will come from the length of the flag on the glider divided by the time it takes that glider to pass through the photo gate given by the equation:

v=L?T

Experimental Methods

This experiment consisted of two parts in order to test Newton's second law. An air track, glider, photo gate with the appropriate computer software, multiple 20 g weights, and a wooden block were required to carry out the procedure. In the first part of the experiment, the proportionality of acceleration