Korrapati 1

AP Physics C

Dr. Bart

Arya Korrapati

August 28, 2022

Acceleration Lab
This paper and lab were done to calculate and derive an approximation for the

acceleration of gravity. By dropping a golf ball from certain heights and timing how long

it would take to hit the ground, we could calculate the acceleration for each test. We

2
calculated the value of gravitational acceleration to be about 9.78 𝑚/𝑠 , a 0.3% decrease

2
from the actual acceleration of 9.81 𝑚/𝑠 .

After some discussion, we decided that the best course of action would be to drop

a golf ball from 1 meter, 1.5 meters, and 2 meters above the ground and record1 the time

it would take to hit the ground. We did 4 tests at every height to give a total of 12 drop in

total. Our data is shown below.

Height (m) Time (s)

1 0.45

1
We recorded the drop using a phone at 0.25x speed and recorded the time intervals to get the dropping
time
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1 0.49

1 0.46

1 0.46

1.5 0.54

1.5 0.56

1.5 0.55

1.5 0.53

2 0.62

2 0.65

2 0.67

2 0.60

This gives us a height vs time graph that is shown below.

 Korrapati 3

With this data, there are multiple ways we could calculate the acceleration, but the

one we used would be calculating the individual accelerations, then averaging them to get

a final average. We first will start with the known kinematic equation of

1 2
𝑥 = 𝑥0 + 𝑣0𝑡 + 2
𝑎𝑡 where x is the final height, 𝑥0 is the initial height, t is the time to

hit the ground, 𝑣0 is the initial velocity, and a is the acceleration due to gravity. Because

we assume no initial velocity since we are dropping it instead of throwing it down, we

1 2
can cancel out the 𝑣0𝑡 to get the equation 𝑥 = 𝑥0 + 2
𝑎𝑡 . To isolate acceleration, we

2 2
subtract 𝑥0 and multiply by 2 to get, 2(𝑥 − 𝑥0) = 𝑎𝑡 . After dividing by 𝑡 , we get the
 Korrapati 4

2(𝑥−𝑥0)
equation 2 = 𝑎. If we assume x to be ground level and to be 0 feet in height, then
𝑡

(𝑥 − 𝑥0) = (0 − 𝑥0). We know that (0 − 𝑥0) is the same thing as (− 𝑥0). In that case,

2(−𝑥0) −2𝑥0
we can substitute (− 𝑥0) in for (𝑥 − 𝑥0) to get 2 = 𝑎, or 𝑎 = 2 . If we apply
𝑡 𝑡

this equation for every test drop, we get the following table.

Height (m) Time (s) Acceleration (𝑚/𝑠 )

2

1 0.45 9.87

1 0.49 8.32

1 0.46 9.45

1 0.46 9.45

1.5 0.54 10.28

1.5 0.56 10.28

1.5 0.55 9.92

1.5 0.53 10.68

2 0.62 10.40

2 0.65 9.46
 Korrapati 5

2 0.67 8.91

2 0.60 11.11

If we graph the acceleration vs the height, we get the graph below

2
If we average the accelerations, we get a final approximation of 9.78 𝑚/𝑠 with a

standard deviation of 0.73. In fact, a 68.3% confidence level gives us a margin of error of

± 2. 12, which encompasses the actual acceleration of 9.81 comfortably.

To check our acceleration and data, we can start out with the equations of

2 2
𝑣 = 𝑣0 + 𝑎𝑡 and 𝑣 = 𝑣0 + 2𝑎(∆𝑥) where ∆𝑥 is the total change in x; in this case, the
 Korrapati 6

2 2
height. Because of this, we can substitute x in the place of (∆𝑥) to get 𝑣 = 𝑣0 + 2𝑎𝑥. If

2
we take the square root of the latter, we get 𝑣 = 𝑣0 + 2𝑎𝑥. We can then set the first

2
equation equal to the second equation to get 𝑣0 + 𝑎𝑡 = 𝑣0 + 2𝑎𝑥. Because we

established that 𝑣0= 0, we can eliminate it from the equations to get 𝑎𝑡 = 2𝑎𝑥. Dividing

2𝑎𝑥
by a gets us the final equation of 𝑡 = 𝑎
. After inserting the heights, we should get

2
what the time to fall should be with the acceleration of 9.78 𝑚/𝑠 2. The results are in the

table below

Height (m) Expected Time (s)

1 0.45

1.5 0.55

2 0.63

If we average the out recorded times at every height, they turn out to be almost

exact, with the results in the table below.

Height (m) Expected Time (s) Recorded Time Average (s)

1 0.45 0.46

1.5 0.55 0.55

2
If we were to use 9.81 instead of 9.78, the difference is less than a hundredth of a second
 Korrapati 7

2 0.63 0.64

2
This validates and supports the answer of 9.78 𝑚/𝑠 .

2
Overall, we were pretty close to the actual value of 9.81 𝑚/𝑠 . We actually found

that if you were to average the accelerations by height, then average the resulting

2
numbers, you would get the exact value of 9.81 𝑚/𝑠 , but averaging averages skews the

data and rarely shows a complete picture. Most of the error comes down to human

factors. The biggest would be not being able to drop the ball perfectly. Sometimes, the

ball would have initial velocity downward, skewing the data, but this problem was abated

by only considering tests without a considerable initial velocity. The other problem was

the ball not moving in a straight line vertically. Because the ball would slightly stick to

the dropper’s hand, it had a very slight horizontal motion, which affected the trajectory of

the ball. Again, this was abated by only considering tests that didn’t include considerable

horizontal movement. After selecting the right tests, the biggest error came down to

timing. The iPhone software was very tricky to get the exact time value, so some

approximations had to be made and there is a high chance of misreading the data.3 To get

a better and more accurate result, a consistent and perfect dropping mechanism would

need to be used along with a high-speed camera to get the exact moments when the ball is

dropped and when it hits the ground.

3
Other data such as air resistance, humidity, breeze, and spin from the ball would have been other factors,
but their combined affect is too small to consider and factor in.