By: Rebecca Finkelman

Is acceleration due to gravity constant?

Galileo Galilei did not know exactly how gravity affected objects, so he performed an inclined plane experiment. His findings concluded that gravity was no longer forcing the ball to accelerate, but that gravity was uniform. This means that the acceleration would be constant, how ever Galileo did not have any type of stop watch to determine this theory. The purpose of this experiment is to determine based on different measurements on a incline if acceleration is constant.

Hypothesis
If

a ball is released from different measurements on an incline, then the acceleration due to gravity will be constant.

Procedure

Gather all the materials needed for this experiment, which include: a ball, ruler, ramp, stop watch Roll the ball down the ramp at about of the ramp high and measure how long it takes for the ball to reach the bottom of the ramp. Repeat this a for a few trials. Continue to roll the ball down the ramp at different heights of , and then the whole ramp and repeat a few trials for each. Record the data in a data table.

Data
Acceleration due to Gravity
120.00 x = 0.8591t2 + 29.124t + 0.7839 R = 0.9988 100.00

80.00 Distance (cm)

60.00

40.00

20.00

0.00 0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00 Time (s)

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

Conclusion
The purpose of this experiment was to investigate if acceleration due to gravity is constant when you drop a ball at different heights of an incline. My hypothesis was supported because I predicted that acceleration would be constant and based on my data, the acceleration was in fact constant. Some improvements I would recommend for farther study would be to make sure to time the ball going down the incline more accurately.