Vertical Motion Laboratory
Equipment needed:
- Basketball
- Motion sensor and USB link
- Computer with DataStudio and the file basketball.ds
- White board with marker.
Points to watch:
- When you mount the motion detector on the ceiling, make sure it
is facing straight down and put the switch on "person" setting and not
"cart" setting.
- When throwing the ball, don't get too close to the detector (<
30 cm or 1 ft.), since the detector will not read distance
correctly. Watch for sudden jumps in velocity, which generally
indicate getting too close or ball moving too much sideways.
- Select data on position, velocity and acceleration to get your
parameters. Make sure to use the same time period each time, and
be careful to not miss points that might be high or low in the time
period.
- Save a copy of your graphs by copying the graph in DataStudio,
then doing a "Paste Special" into MS Word and saving it as a picture
format.
Some Tips on Using DataStudio
Laboratory Write up
You will turn in a lab report for this lab. I expect it will be
on the order of 2-3 pages. It should consist of the following:
- A brief (~1 paragraph) summary of what was done, results gained,
and conclusions
- A discription of what you did (proceedure). I'm expecting a few
paragraphs, detailed enough that someone could replicate your work and
get similar results.
- Results: This will include your graphs, fit parameters and
other data, with enough text to explain them.
- Conclusions: summarizing your findings, discussion of how it fits
with other experimental results.