Paper Writing Services light that travels from one side to the other. It can detect whenever ts beam is blocked. You will drop a piece

Picket Fence Free Fall We say an object is in free fall when the only force acting on it is the earth’s gravitational force. No other forces can be acting; in particular, air resistance must be either absent or so small as to be ignored. When the object in free fall is near the surface of the earth, the gravitational force on it is nearly constant. As a result, an object in free fall accelerates downward at a constant rate. Ts acceleration is usually represented with the symbol g. Physics students measure the acceleration due to gravity using a wide variety of timing methods. In ts experiment, you will have the advantage of using a very precise timer connected to the calculator and a Photogate. The Photogate has a beam of infrared light that travels from one side to the other. It can detect whenever ts beam is blocked. You will drop a piece of clear plastic with evenly spaced black bars on it, called a Picket Fence. As the Picket Fence passes through the Photogate, the LabPro or CBL 2 interface will measure the time from the leading edge of one bar blocking the beam until the leading edge of the next bar blocks the beam. Ts timing continues as all eight bars pass through the Photogate. From these measured times, the program will calculate the velocities and accelerations for ts motion and graphs will be plotted. Picket fence Figure 1 OBJECTIVE • Measure the acceleration of a freely falling body (g) to better than 0.5% precision using a Picket Fence and a Photogate. MATERIALS LabPro or CBL 2 interface Vernier Photogate TI Grapng Calculator Picket Fence DataGate program clamp or ring stand to secure Photogate Modified from and reported with permission of the publisher Copyright (2000), Vernier Software & Technology Experiment 5 5 – 2 Physics with Calculators PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS 1. Inspect your Picket Fence. You will be dropping it through a Photogate to measure g. The distance, measured from one edge of a black band to the same edge of the next band, is 5.0 cm. What additional information will you need to determine the average speed of the Picket Fence as it moves through the Photogate? 2. If an object is moving with constant acceleration