Lab 8: Centripetal Acceleration vs. Angular Frequency 3/25/15

Physics Lab #8 started on 3/25/15
Centripetal Acceleration vs. Angular Frequency
Annemarie Branks
Professor Wolf

Objective: Determine the relationship between centripetal acceleration and angular speed.

Procedure:
     1.  This was a class demonstration because there was only one apparatus, which was a voltage box connected to a wheel which spun our heavy rotating disk. The voltage box allowed us to have a constant angular velocity for the disk. We turned on the the box at 4.4 volts and used our photogate and LoggerPro to determine the period of one rotation which we used to determine angular velocity. We then took data  from the accelerometer to determine its centripetal acceleration.

     2.  Repeat the process for increasing angular speed. We repeated this process for 6.4, 8.6, 9.6, and 10.8 volts. 
     3.  Since centripetal acceleration = r*ѡ^2, make a graph of ѡ^2 by centripetal acceleration. The graph's slope should give you the radius of the rotating disk.

     4.  Compare the slope of your graph to the actual radius of the rotating disk. Our actual radius was 13.8 cm which is equal to 0.138 m. This is very accurate to the answer we got from the graph, so the experiment was a success with showing the relationship between the centripetal acceleration and angular speed.