Borough of Manhattan Community College

General Physics I: PHY 210 (091B) || Fall 2016

Experiment 5: Newtons Second Law: The Atwood Machine

Date of Performance: October 16th, 2016

Date of Submission: October 31st, 2016

Student: Abigail Adzishvily

Student's Email: orlyadi@gmail.com

Partners: Rumi Evelyn

Objective

The objective of this experiment is to demonstrate Newtons second law of motion.

Newtons Second Law dictates that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the

vector sum of the forces acting on said object or system. We investigate this relationship with the

Atwood Machine, which consists of two masses connecting by a string and manipulated with a

pulley system. This system was named after British scientist George Atwood, who used this

concoction to study and calculate the acceleration due to gravity.

Theory

The light string is considered of negligible mass, therefore does not factor into the

calculations of this experiment. The ascending and descending mass are m1 and m2 respectively.

Key Concepts and Governing Equations:

a) F = m*a

b) F = a*(m1+m2)

c) a = F/total mass M = (m2-m1)g/(m1+m2)

d) y = g/m1*m2
1
e) y =2 2

Data, Calculations, and Results

Value for g: 11.37 m/s y=g/m1*m2 70.807 = g/m1+m2

Value of y: 70.807
 Figure 5.1 investigating the acceleration of the pulley.

M1 M2 M2-M1 T (1) T (2) T (avg) () a

0.0802 kg 0.08557 kg 5.37 103 kg 2.45 s 2.84 s 2.65 s 7.00 s 0.2 / 2

0.0792 kg 0.08657 kg 7.37 103 kg 1.84 s 2.31 s 2.08 s 4.36 s 0.32 / 2

0.0772 kg 0.08857 kg 0.01137 kg 1.70 s 1.60 s 1.65s 2.72 s 0.51 / 2

0.0752 kg 0.09057 kg 0.01537 kg 1.18 s 1.46 s 1.32 s 1.74 s 0.81 / 2

0.0732 kg 0.09257 kg 0.01937 kg 1.34 s 1.56 s 1.45 s 2.10 s 0.67 / 2

0.0712 kg 0.09457 kg 0.02337 kg 0.91 s 1.10 s 1.01 s 1.01 s 1.39 / 2

0.0692 kg 0.09657 kg 0.02737 kg 0.91 s 0.78 s 0.85 s 0.71 s 1.96 / 2

0.0592 kg 0.10657 kg 0.04737 kg 0.81 s 0.54 s 0.68 s 0.46 s 3.07 / 2

Figure 5.2 demonstrating the increasing acceleration due to the mass

Mass Difference vs. Acceleration

3.5

3 y = 70.906x - 0.2749

2.5
Acceleration

1.5

0.5

0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Mass

Summary and Conclusion

The value for g was 11.37 / 2 . The accepted value is g 9.80 / 2 and it left me with a

16% error. Probably due to a level of human error in relation to recording the data. The

acceleration increased considerably when more mass was transferred to the descending can. The

Atwood Machine demonstrated the relationship between mass and gravity when we have

computed the speed, time, and mass into their respective formulas.

Our experimental value for g was within acceptable range extracted from this

arrangement.