Explore and review the basic physics of how different things relate to one another.

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Lab Report 1                               Physical Relationships

By   Ben Sefcik        ID#2245154                Physics 200                Athabasca University

Introduction

This lab is intended to explore and review the basic physics of how different things relate to one another.  The lab is broken up into four different parts: rubber band force constant, pendulum, combination of errors, and quadratic functions.

The first to be looked at was elasticity compared to weight and gravitational force: rubber band force constant.  The relationship should produce a linear relationship and a linear regression was performed to verify that it was linear and to see more closely the relationship of the two components.  

The next section looked at the relationship between the amount of time required for a pendulum to complete 10 oscillations and the length of string used.  It was expected that the length of string used would have an exponential effect to the time used.  In other words, as the string gets longer the time required to do 10 full oscillations would become exponentially larger.

The third part of the lab looked at taking errors into consideration.  There are two different types of errors: random and systematic.  These errors can have different impacts on the analysis of the results depending on the regression curve that best fits the data collected.  This part of the lab will look at these impacts.

The last part of the lab looked at a more complex type of relationship.  The quadratic relationship is often found in physics because it is about the motion of bodies.  It is a very useful equation because the unknown can be determined and the results are very useful.  These results are called roots.  The equation also tells much as to what happened and the different parts of the equation were explored.    

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Method Part A

An old 35mm film container was used to hold Canadian $1 coins (loonies); a paper clip was bent into a “V” shape and attached to the top of the container by electrical tape.  A rubber band was place inside the paperclip to enable the container to be hung from a nail to measure the elasticity of the rubber band.  The rubber band measured 56mm with no loonies in the container.  The ruler was attached to the wall to reduce the amount of random error.  One by one the loonies were added to the container and ...

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