Thursday, September 23, 2010

Acceleration

Acceleration is the change velocity over a period of time.

For instance, when a car is at rest and the driver presses the pedal, the car accelerates forward -- it's velocity has changed from 0 to however many miles per hour in whatever direction he is headed. Every time that car makes even the slightest of turns, stops, or reverses, its velocity has changed, and, therefore, it has accelerated (or negatively accelerated, in the case of going backwards or stopping).


Sunday, September 19, 2010

September 2010 Distance Homework

My house is about 19.8 miles away from Parish. We leave every day around seven, and arrive by 7:45. It generally takes about 40 minutes to get from our house to Parish.

This means that our average speed is 29.7 miles per hour, which is approximately 796 meters/minute. I figured this out by:


AVG. SPEED = DISTANCE/TIME (v = x/t)
x = 19.8 miles
t = 40 minutes
v = ?

19.8 miles ÷ 40 minutes = 0.495 miles/minute
x 60 minutes per hour = 29.7 miles/per hour

29.7 MPH = ? meters/per hour
1 Mile ≈ 1609 meters
1609 m x 29.7 mi = 47,787 m
47,787 m ÷ 60 mins = 796 m / minute
47787 x 1 1/3 =

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

September 2010 Pendulum Lab


HYPOTHESIS: The longer the length of the pendulum, the longer the time it takes to swing through the air.

METHODOLOGY: A pendulum was attached to the ceiling at approximately 2 yards length. Our group held the pendulum back and let go, then counted the amount of time it took to complete three complete swings. We then divided that number by three to get the mean time it took for one swing. This was repeated seven times. We recorded this data onto pieces of paper and transposed them here.

GRAPH: Above

CONCLUSION: Our conclusion is that the longer the string, the longer the time it takes to complete a full swing. The graph shows that the length of the string has a positive correlation to the time it took to swing.