Lab 1

Lab 1: Finding A Relationship Between Mass And Period For An Inertial Balance

Purpose: The purpose of this lab is to, as is states in the title, to find a relationship between mass and period for an inertial balance by measuring the period of different masses recorded by a photo gate. 

Procedure: First my group secured the inertial balance to the desk using a C-clamp with the photo gate secured to the standing rod, just slightly in front of the balance, as shown in the picture.

My group then measured the periods of a variety of masses from nothing on the balance to 800g using. Shown in the picture is a table of the recorded masses and periods. 

Now that my group recorded the masses and periods, we then recorded our results in Excel. To make a graph of our results we needed to make a relationship between our mass and period. To do this we needed to use the Power Law Equation, as shown in the picture.

We now have new variables to our Excel sheet. In order to find the mass of the tray, we needed to try inputing different values until we got a straight-line plot. We did this until we got a straight line with a  correlation of 0.9998. Pictured below is our recorded data and graph in Excel.