Free Fall: Ball and Picket-fence Experiment

This activity is the most fun so far! I felt the "scientist feel" because of the digital tool that we used- LabQuest

LabQuest with motion sensor and a ball

Basically, the motion sensor (the dark green one) detects the ball's movement and the lab quest will do the analysis. We determined its linear and quadratic fit to get the value of g. This was done 10 times.

Detection of ball's motion

After the ball experiment, we proceeded with the Picket- fence experiment. Below is the image:

Picket- Fence with Photogate Sensor

The picket-fence (with dark bands) was let to fall near the Photogate sensor to detect motion as shown below:

Finding g in Picket-Fence Experiment

Still, the tool that we used to analyzed the data is LabQuest. Same method- determination of linear and quadratic fit to find g.

After all the experiment, our value of g is

9.35749±0.387 m/s2

The standard value is

9.8 m/s2

The difference is due to the fact that different places on earth have different acceleration due to gravity and the small experimental errors.

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