Creative work

Our last experiment in physics 101.1 is an experiment designed by our own. We designed an experiment on conservation of energy. By using the set up below, we can verify that indeed the energy is conserved throughout the path of the ball. Energies included here are rotational and translational kinetic energy and potential energy.

The following data are obtained from the set up:

x1	x2	x3	<x>	sqrth	<x>
40.5	40.9	41.1	40.83333	5.932959	40.83333
36.7	36.9	36.4	36.66667	5.403702	36.66667
33.8	33.7	34.2	33.9	4.959839	33.9
29.9	30	30.3	30.06667	4.516636	30.06667
26	25.9	26.1	26	4.09878	26
20.9	20.7	21	20.86667	3.405877	20.86667
13.1	14	12.5	13.2	2.539685	13.2

And the graph obtained by plotting the distance versus the square of the height.

We can see that the fit of this graph is nearly linear as predicted by the equation of conservation of momentum where, the change in total mechanical energy is constant since friction does not do any work on the system.