Work Done by Air Drag

Patrick McAtee | Classical Mechanics | 07 October 2010

Introduction

An experiment was set up to determine how velocity affects friction on a track with a car
moving down a metal ramp.
Friction in this game will be assumed to be caused by the fluid the cart is moving through, in
this case, the air. To determine the friction, total mechanical energy will be measured and thus
any loss in total mechanical energy can be attributed predominantly to friction caused by air.
The work, which is non-conservative in this instance because it is caused by friction, can be
found by
(1)
Whereas, from Classical Mechanics by John Taylor, equation 2.46, force can be described as
(2)

Materials

 Pasco track
 Pasco car
 Ruler
 USB Drive
 Photogate
 Computer
 Pasco Bumper
 Pasco Xplorer

Methods

The Pasco track was set up on an arbitrary incline with the photogate attached to the track at
the top of the track. At the end of the track, the Pasco bumper was attached so that the cart did
not fall onto the ground. Next, the photogate is hooked up to the Xplorer unit and the Xplorer
unit was set up to save data to a USB drive, as laid out in the Pasco Explorer User’s Guide.

To collect data, the cart was rested against the bumper and then pushed up the ramp after the
Xplorer unit is set to collect data. This is repeated multiple times and the car pushed at various,
arbitrary speeds up the ramp, careful not to bump the photogate at the top. At this point, all
relevant data will have been collected.
Data

Data collected in this lab is best summed up through graphs of the velocity versus time. Graphs
of all data from ten runs are attached at the end of this report.

Below is a table with the average accelerations as calculated through Microsoft Excel for each
trial based on the formula from equation (5).

Trial Average Change in Energy (J) Distance

Acceleration (m/s2) Traveled(m)
1 0.333726 0.2996 1.685
2 0.104965 0.108 1.276
3 0.102862 0.1141 1.134
4 0.146211 0.1044 1.403
5 0.085867 0.0592 1.037
6 0.13419 0.1351 1.292
7 0.017339 0.0237 0.339
8 0.114601679 0.048 1.254
9 0.044941 0.0123 0.339
10 0.139034 0.1188 1.378

Results

Question 1: Work can be simplified to be force times distance, which is then substituted into
equation (1) from “Friction on an Air Track” lab handout, so that

But because work is also equal to change in kinetic energy, kinetic energy can be substituted for
W. And since it can be assumed that the initial velocity is zero, one of the factors in kinetic
energy cancels out and force can be expressed as mass times acceleration, so
(4)

which simplifies to

(5)

Question 2: The acceleration is underestimated when the cart travels up the ramp because
gravity is doing most of the stopping force and the velocity is slowing down, so friction factors
into the equation less and less as the cart slows. As the cart moves down the incline, it is
gaining speed, but not enough for air drag to play a large part in frictional forces acting on the
cart.

Question 3: Substituting equation 3 into equation 2 yields

which when integrated gives

for work.

Question 4: To find ‘n’, log of work versus log of position should be plotted. This will give a
linear relationship.

Question 5: In this case, n is a scaling exponent of work. Work is varies as a power of the
velocity of the cart.

Question 6: See Data section of paper.

Analysis

What can be first discerned from the data is that very, very little work is actually done by
friction, but enough is done that it is measurable. From the data table, it can be seen that
friction does anywhere from .02 joules of work to .3 joules of work. The variation of work done
by friction varies due to the incline of the ramp which the cart is traveling up. The slower the
cart travels, the less influence fluid drag will have on the movement of the cart.

It was also shown that from equation (1), many equations that help determine acceleration,
velocity, and position can be determined. Deriving these equations shows how somewhat
complex equations can be funneled down to first principles so that work done by friction can be
easily explained in general Newtonian principles.

Most error in the calculations would have to be attributed to the friction between the car and
the track, and even some can be attributed to the axles, though this would be less noticeable.
Some error is inherent in the equipment used and the equipment only gave the measurements
out to one decimal place. Any calculations made with these numbers would thus be only
somewhat accurate. Considering how small the work done by friction was, the accuracy of the
equipment probably played a large part on how accurate the work done by friction was.
Conclusion

It was shown in this lab that the work done by the drag of air is quite small, though noticeably
measurable with standard equipment. The equations of work can be easily manipulated to give
work done in simple Newtonian terms. Finally, it was simple enough to set up the Explorer units
to collect data on a USB stick, which will let future experimenters know that it is possible to do
experiments without immediate access to a computer.
Figure 1

Velocity vs Position 1
1.5

0.5
Velocity (m/s)

0
Series1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position

Figure 2

Velocity vs Position
1.5

0.5
Veloicty (m/s)

0
Series1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position (m)
Figure 3

Velocity vs Position
1

0.5
Velocity (m/s)

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
Series1
-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position (m)

Figure 4

Velocity vs Position
1.5

0.5
Velocity (m/s)

0
Series1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position (m)
Figure 5

Velocity vs Position
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
Velocity (m/s)

0.2
0
Series1
-0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
-1
Position (m)

Figure 6

Velocity vs Position
1.5

0.5
Velocity (m/s)

0
Series1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position (m)
Figure 7

Velocity vs Position
0.6

0.4

0.2
Velocity (m/s)

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 Series1
-0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8
Position (m)

Figure 8

Velocity vs Position
1

0.5

0
Velocity (m/s)

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

Series1
-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position (m)
Figure 9

Velocity vs Position
0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2
Velocity (m/s)

0
Series1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
-0.2

-0.4

-0.6

-0.8
Position (m)

Figure 10

Velocity vs Position
1.5

0.5
Velocity (m/s)

0
Series1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
-0.5

-1

-1.5
Position (m)