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Steel Ball Lab
Partner: Aurelien V.

Materials: • 2 metre sticks • 1 small steel ball • 1 medium steel ball • I stop watch • 1 physics textbook • Tape • 1 tape measure • 1 brain (optional)

Procedure 1. Create a ramp using 2 meter sticks, tape and your text book 2. Got to the hallway 3. Roll the small ball down the ramp and time the trip from start to finish, and measure the distance. 4. Repeat above step x5 5. Make a table and calculate average velocity for each roll 6. Calculate overall average for all five rolls 7. Repeat with medium size balls media type="file" key="Movie 2.mov" width="300" height="300" The filming of the elusive small ball being rolled down the ramp. media type="file" key="Movie 4.mov" width="300" height="300" Medium Ball being rolled down a ramp

Raw Data

Small Balls:


 * Trial || Time (s) || Distance (cm) || Velocity (m/s down the hall) e.g. 4.555/4.89=0.93 ||
 * 1 || 4.89 || 455.5 || 0.93 ||
 * 2 || 4.52 || 429.5 || 0.95 ||
 * 3 || 4.80 || 422.7 || 0.88 ||
 * 4 || 4.95 || 421.4 || 0.85 ||
 * 5 || 4.61 || 415.2 || 0.90 ||

Medium Balls:


 * Trial || Time (s) || Distance (cm) || Velocity (m/s down the hall) e.g. 4.555/4.89=0.93 ||
 * 1 || 5.10 || 460.0 || 0.90 ||
 * 2 || 5.33 || 475.0 || 0.89 ||
 * 3 || 5.45 || 466.3 || 0.86 ||
 * 4 || 5.50 || 482.0 || 0.88 ||
 * 5 || 5.32 || 475.2 || 0.89 ||

Processed Data: Average velocity for small balls (m/s down the hall): 0.90 Average velocity for medium balls (m/s down the hall): 0.88

Conclusion: There was a slight difference in velocity between the two balls. The average velocity of the small ball was 0.02 m/s more than the medium ball. The smaller ball appeared to go slightly faster than the medium one. Gotta look good when doing physics

Lab Part 3
Raw Data:


 * Trial || Small Ball Time (s) || Medium Ball Time (s) || Distance (m) ||
 * 1 || 1.36 || 1.37 || 1 ||
 * 2 || 1.20 || 1.41 || 1 ||
 * 3 || 1.24 || 1.49 || 1 ||
 * 4 || 1.38 || 1.46 || 1 ||
 * 5 || 1.20 || 1.47 || 1 ||
 * 6 || 1.29 || 1.32 || 1 ||
 * 7 || 1.33 || 1.22 || 1 ||
 * 8 || 1.40 || 1.23 || 1 ||
 * 9 || 1.33 || 1.22 || 1 ||
 * 10 || 1.21 || 1.25 || 1 ||

Processed Data:

Average Time for Small Ball (s): 1.29 Average Time for Medium Ball (s): 1.34

Average Accelleration for Small Ball: 0.76m/s^2 Average Accelleration for Medium Ball: 0.75m/s^2

Conclusion: Our data seems to show that the small ball had a slightly higher accelleration than the medium ball.

Overall Evaluation of all Labs
All data shown above is extremely rough as we were not in possession of proper scientific equipment to record all of our data perfectly and without any tampering by control variables we hadn't taken care of. Next time, a few improvements could be made. When we rolled the ball down the ramp, I might have accidentally applied some force to the balls in some cases. To solve this, if we did this again, we could place a ruler in front of the ball, and then remove it when we started the timer. Also, it is impossible to have complete synchronisation between your hands and a stopwatch being used by someone else. There is not much we could do about this as this would require expensive, complicated equipment. Also the carpet was bit uneven, as some places weren't completely flat. To solve this, next time we should do the experiment on a flatter surface.