What is the purpose of the picket fence lab?

What is the purpose of the picket fence lab?

The purpose of this lab was to measure the acceleration of a free falling object by using the slope of a velocity vs. time graph. If we drop the picket fence from the same height every time then the photogate will read the slope at 9.8 every time.

How does a picket fence and Photogate work?

The Photogate has a beam of infrared light that travels from one side to the other. It can detect whenever this beam is blocked. You will drop a piece of clear plastic with evenly spaced black bars on it, called a Picket Fence.

How can we use a picket fence to determine the acceleration due to gravity on Earth?

The “picket fence” has been used since photogates were developed to measure acceleration. The “pickets” block the photogate in sequence, giving a series of velocity readings. Using the velocities and the times between those velocities, the datalogger (or the student) can calculate the acceleration of the picket fence.

What is the acceleration of the picket fence?

approximately 9.8 m/s2
The value of the gravitational acceleration is approximately 9.8 m/s2. In this experiment you drop a “picket fence” (a clear plastic strip with uniformly spaced opaque bands) through a photogate.

How does a Photogate work?

The Photogate works by projecting an infrared beam to a sensor. When the beam is blocked the sensor stops sending a signal, which illuminates an LED on the top of the gate as well as triggering the data collection software to display a blocked message in the data collection area.

What is picket fence in physics?

How do you set up a Photogate?

Photogate Setup Using LabQuest App

1. Tap the Mode box or choose Data Collection from the Sensors menu.
2. Choose the appropriate mode from the drop-down menu.
3. Set the requested distance variable(s) to match the experiment, such as the length of the object or the distance between gates.
4. Select OK.

How do you find acceleration using a Photogate?

Measuring the acceleration of an object with one flag using two photogates.

1. Use default Object Velocity sensor channel on both photogates.
2. Collect data using time-based data collection.
3. Use the velocity and time measurements for each photogate to calculate the acceleration (Change in Velocity/Change in Time)

How is Photogate used to measure velocity?

In this application a card attached to a moving object breaks the beam of the photogate timer providing the time for the card to pass. The length L of the passing card can then be divided by this time to yield the average velocity (or speed) of the passing object: Vavg = L/t.

How does a Photogate measure acceleration?

How does a Photogate work physics?

How does the picket fence work in photogate?

As we drop “a clear plastic with evenly spaced black bars on it, called the Picket Fence” through Photogate, it will calculate the amount of time the light beam from the device being blocked and send the data to Logger Pro, which we used in Lab 1.

What is the purpose of the picket fence free fall lab?

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.

How do you find the precision of a picket fence?

To find the precision you take the uncertainty number divided by the average times 100. ours was .02072/9.75488=.21% When the picket fence completely passed thru the photogate a graph of the acceleration vs. time and a velocity vs. time graph would appear on our lab quest screen.

Why does a picket fence not fall down?

This is due to the fact that the fence is fighting gravity as it is thrown upward, as opposed to free falling because of the pull of gravity. The purpose of the Picket Fence Free Fall Lab was to examine the acceleration of objects as they fall to earth.