Lab 5: Circular motion

Lab 5: Circular motion 

For lab 5 we were asked to find the mass of an object spinning in a circular motion. In order to properly test this we used the DMV Player program Motion in a circle.

To first calculate the mass we needed to find the object velocity.  We set the graph to 30 FPS and monitored the simulation to see how long the graph would take to send the object in a complete circle. We calculated it to take 724 frames to complete its rotation, thus meaning it took 24 seconds to complete its circle. 

The simulation then provided us with the force of the movement up in the top center. We were then able to calculate the velocity of the object by using the rotation motion equation, v=2piR/time, or plugging the numbers into it v=2pi60/3.016, giving us a velocity of 1.25 centimeters. 

We are then able to calculate the acceleration using velocity/radius to get an acceleration of 2.6 MPS. We were then able to plug this into the traditional force formula, F=MA, or in this case 1.15=m*2.6, which we can divide our acceleration into the force for 1.15/2.6=M, or .44Kg of mass for the object.

Errors

Possible errors that could change our results were rounding errors, improper conversions between centimeters and meters.