E104 Newton's Second Law of Motion

Analysis

The experiment that was conducted was primarily about Newton’s second law of motion. Newton’s second law of motion states that a net force is required for a body to have acceleration. If a net force is applied on an object, then the object will accelerate with respect to the direction of the said force. The body’s acceleration is directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to its mass. The experiment conducted was used to verify the relationships specified in Newton’s second law of motion. There were 3 trials, and these were:
A. Constant Mass, Varying Net Force
B. Varying Mass, Constant Net Force
C. Varying Mass, Varying Net Force
In the said experiment, the formula used for the calculation of the experimental acceleration was:

As for the accepted value, the formula used was:

For the first trial, the net force changes when the mass of the mass hanger changes. The net force, N, is obtained by the equation of m2g, where m2 represents the hanging mass, and g is the constant gravitational pull, which is 9.8m/s2. The results of part A can be seen in the table below.
Mass of cart, m1 = 0.51kg
Distance traveled, s = 0.5m

TRIAL m2 Net force,
Accepted acceleration
Time of travel
Experimental acceleration
% ERROR
1
0.02kg
0.19N
0.36m/s2
1.50s
0.44 m/s2
22.22%
2
0.04kg
0.39N
0.71 m/s2
1.06s
0.89 m/s2
25.35%
3
0.06kg
0.58N
1.05 m/s2
0.88s
1.29 m/s2
22.86%
4
0.08kg
0.78N
1.32 m/s2
0.72s
1.92 m/s2
45.45%
5
0.10kg
0.97N
1.59 m/s2
0.67s
2.28 m/s2
43.40%

Figure A: The setup for Constant Mass – Varying Net Force There was a large factor between the accepted acceleration and the experimental acceleration. This was because in the experimental acceleration, the factors used were only the time of travel, t, and the distance s, which is the distance traversed by the cart, which were concepts of kinematics. As a commonly known and used example in the concept of kinematics, a rock drops