Picket Fence Free Fall Lab Report

The purpose of the Picket Fence Free Fall Lab was to examine the acceleration of objects as they fall to earth. During free-fall the only force that should be acting upon the object is the earth’s gravitational pull (9.8 m/s/s), therefore the velocity of the object should always equal 9.8 m/s/s. In this lab the picket fence was dropped repeatedly through a photogate connected to Logger Pro, which allowed the fence’s acceleration and velocity to be recorded and graphed.

The results of the experiment confirmed the theory that objects will fall with a constant acceleration equal to g (9.8 m/s/s). During the first 5 runs, the photogate was dropped from the same height and had an average acceleration of 9.762 m/s/s-- which is extremely close