The purpose of this lab is to observe the effects of various changes to the apparatus and how it effects the angular acceleration of the system. These observations would help us find moments of inertia later on.
Apparatus:
The apparatus consists of an elaborate mechanism that consisted of 2 steel cylinders, 1 aluminum cylinder, an air hose, string, a hanging mass, a pulley, a torque pulley, a pin to hold the cylinders together, and a photo gate located on the side of the brown box seen on the top right hand corner of the apparatus next to the cylinders. The cylinders (a combination of 2 steel or 1 steel, 1 aluminum) would be placed next to the brown photo gate box and held together with a pin as seen below. Between the pin and the cylinders would be a torque pulley that will be connected to a string with a mass at its opposite end. As the system begins to spin the mass would move upward or downward depending the direction of the spin of the cylinder(s). The cylinders contain white and black on their side which allow for the photo gate to capture and collect the angular speed of the spinning cylinder(s).
The system would be connected to an air source via air hose. As the air was increase the cylinders would spin together or the top cylinder would spin by itself if the air was allowed to escape through the secondary hose.
Experiment:
Six different trials were conducted to observe the difference in angular accelerations when different characteristics of the system were changed which included: amount of hanging mass, size of torque pulley, mass of the rotating cylinders, and whether both cylinders were spinning. The six different trials were preformed as specified on the lab handout and the data was recorded using logger pro.
Conclusion:
By analyzing the data we can see that various aspects of the system effect the angular acceleration of the cylinder(s). The first is the amount of hanging mass attached to the string. As seen in the data, the angular acceleration increases by approximately 0.6 radians per second each time the hanging mass is increased by the amount of its original. The next factor that effects the angular acceleration is the radius of the torque pulley. Changing the torque pulley from a small radius to a larger one significantly increases the angular acceleration almost doubling the value. The mass of the spinning cylinder also greatly effects the angular acceleration, meaning a light mass generates a greater angular acceleration. Finally, the amount of cylinders spinning effects the angular acceleration as well. When both of the cylinders spin the angular acceleration drastically decreases. By observing these changes we can conclude that the value of angular acceleration is directly effected by mass of the spinning object, mass of the attached object, radius of the spinning object and radius of the torque pulley.
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