Lab 8 Centripetal Acceleration vs. Angular Frequency

1.      Lab 8: Centripetal Acceleration vs. Angular Frequency (not in lab book)

a.      Lab conducted by Mohammed Karim (author), Lynel, Andrew, Richard

2.      Objective –  Better understand the variables behind centripetal acceleration and how changing a variable affects the overall result.

3.      Theory/Introduction – Centripetal acceleration is comprised of mass*radius*omega^2. In this lab, we change the values in excel and solve the centripetal acceleration.

4.      Apparatus/Procedure –

There was a single apparatus used. It consisted of a disk being spun by many tires. We attached a motion sensor at different points to affect the radius. We changed the masses to change mass (of course) and we changed the speed to affect omega. After changing the values, we wrote down the values and graphed them in excel.

5.      Data Tables

Shows the changing mass and how it affects force.

Shows the changing radii and changing velocities to affect omega.

6.      Conclusion – Overall, our results showed that changing mass and radius affects centripetal force linearly. If we changed omega, it changed the value based on a quadratic function (because it is squared). For example, if we were to double omega, it would multiply centripetal force by 4.