Lab Experiment #1- Acceleration on an Inclined Plane

Measurements
You will measure the acceleration of a cart rolling down an inclined plane. Then you will compare
your experimental value of the acceleration in each case with the expected value for the acceleration
on an inclined plane at that particular angle. This will be done as follows:
* take data with motion sensor with cart on a track
a) measure at least two different angles of the track
b) for each angle, collect at least Three sets of data
Your acceleration values will come from the data. For each case, you should extract the value of the
acceleration 3 ways: from the x vs. t graph, from the vx vs. t graph and from the ax vs. t graph.
It would be best to produce 3-frame plots for each case, with these graphs stacked up in a column.
Note that there will be some uncertainty (i.e. error) in your extracted values (more on this below).
Your expected (theoretical) value for acceleration will come from your knowledge of the geometry
of the inclined plane. While we are calling this a theoretical value, it does still involve some
measurements in order to determine the geometry of your setup. While you may assume that the
value of g = 9.8 m/s2 is known precisely (at least, for our purposes), the measurements of your
geometry will also involve some uncertainty in the process (more on this below).

Uncertainties
It is easy to extract the acceleration from your data. It is also straightforward to measure the
geometry of your track setup (or from the movie). In any case, you should do all of that carefully.
But the real question is: How well do you actually know the values you are getting? In other
words, what is the uncertainty in those extracted values? Do the experimental and theoretical
values agree within this uncertainty, or are they outside of the range of agreement? This is a harder
question to answer, and you will need to spend some time on it, because you have to make a
reasonable estimate of your uncertainty in the experimental and theoretical values.
For the analysis of the movie as well as the motion sensor data, you need to ask yourself what can
possibly contribute to a range of answers for your extracted acceleration, or for your geometrical
values? What did you do, or what did you measure, that can introduce some variation? How would
you make reasonable estimates of those variations? This requires some thought on your part!
For example, if you measure g to be 9.2 m/s2 in a free-fall experiment, is that close enough to the
known value of g? Clearly, you cannot say without knowing the uncertainty. If your measurement
was 9.2 0.8 m/s2, then that does in fact overlap with 9.8 m/s2. But if you got 9.2 0.1 m/s2, then it
does not agree and you have some explaining to do! That is, either something went wrong with
your experiment, or else you underestimated your experimental uncertainties.
Final comment: note that human error is NOT an acceptable answer under any circumstances!!
Such a phrase should never (ever!) appear in your lab report.