Lab Report 8:

Atwood’s Machine
03/23/12

James Allison
section 20362

Group 5
James Allison, Clint Rowe,
& William Cochran

Objective:
We will determine the acceleration of the weights of an Atwood’s Machine, both
experimentally and theoretically. We will attempt to verify Newton’s Second law which is a
mathematical statement relating force, mass, and acceleration.  Newton’s Second law states
that acceleration, a, is directly related to net force, F, and inversely related to mass, m. Naturally
this give F=ma.  Using the Atwood’s Machine experimental acceleration data (for 10 different
runs with 10 different combinations of masses) will be gathered and compared to the theoretical
acceleration which is predicted by Newton’s Second Law using a modified version of  F=ma.
The only two variables in this system system that we will control are the the two masses. We
also know the value of gravity, which was set a 9.8 m/s2. We will see if the second law is if fact
true via our experiment and we will test calculate the error of our findings when compared to the
theoretical findings.

Discussion
Newton claims that the the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net
force acting on it (in the direction of the net force) and that the acceleration is inversely
proportional to the mass of the object. Or more simply stated F=ma. To verify this we used a
pre-assembled Atwood’s Machine.
Our machine is a modern version of Rev. George Atwood’s original contraption. Ours
uses a electronic seeing eye to detect spoke movement of the pulley. This information is used to
by DataStudio to compute the acceleration of the the system of masses. This is a digital sensor
so it was connected to a digital port of the interface box. We then had to input the spoke length
for the pulley. This value is .0015 meters. The sensor did not need to be calibrated, so no
calibration was done. We draped a long practically massless string over the pulley and attached
a mass hanger on each end of the string. It should be noted that our mass hangers had a mass
of .005 kg a piece. This value was added to the weights in order to achieve the values of both
mass 1 and 2. We then moved the hangers with the proper amount of mass to opposite
positions. The heavier hanger at the maximum height position and the lesser mass to the zero
height position.
One member of our group started recording data by pressing the start button in
DataStudio, and a moment later another member of our group released the lighter weight from
the zero height position. This allowed both masses to begin accelerating. When the two masses
had switched positions the recording was stopped. We recorded the acceleration that
Datastudio gave as well as the two masses that were used. The acceleration was the slope of a
best fit line of the the velocity of the masses vs. time. We also added the masses to get a total
mass.
This procedure was repeated 9 more times. For runs #2 through #5, .01 kg was removed
from the heavier weight and added to the lighter weight. Run #6 was a copy of Run #5 in order
to keep our tables orderly and understandable. For runs #7 through #10 .01 kg was added to
each of the 2 masses.
We then calculated the net force of the system of masses using the equation
Fnet =(M2-M1)g. This was done with each combination of masses. We found that the net force
acting on the system was proportional to the difference in the two masses.  We then calculated
the theoretical acceleration using the equation a=(FnetM1+M2). This column of data showed
two things. One that the relationship between the measured acceleration and force was in fact
proportional and that some sort of systematic error had occurred during our collection of force
data. I will discuss this later in the “Conclusion” section.

Conclusion:
Our data further corroborates Sir Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion. Acceleration is
directly proportional to the net force acting on the system. This was also shown by the inversely
proportional relationship between the acceleration of the masses and the sum total of those
masses. This is shown clearly in our graph. When the total mass remains constant acceleration
increases with the increase in net force acting on the system. The inversely proportional
relationship between total mass and acceleration is also shown in our graph. I took the liberty of
plotting the non-constant mass by F vs. aexp. Which clearly showed that with an increase in
total mass resulted in a gradual decrease of the acceleration of the system.
There were several sources of error in our experiment. But none affected the ability for a
relationship between mass, acceleration, force to be drawn. The largest error was the one
mentioned above. But its source was the easiest to account for. We mis-imputed the value of
the spoke length into DataStudio. Luckley this mistake was easily remedied due to the design of
the pulley. The electronic eye was recording a time that was exactly half of what it should have
been. This time data produced an acceleration that was exactly double what it should be.
Therefore this was issue was easily remedied by dividing the times by 2.
Other sources of error were due to the frictional forces in the pulley system, also the
masses of the weights might not have been perfect. Air resistance was a major player when the
difference in masses was large, therefore acceleration was high. The weights could have been
verified to eliminate that error, and more advanced physics could have been used to take into
account the friction of the pulley and the air resistance.