Experiment 1.

7:
Graphical Analysis of
Motion

Harmandip Singh
SPIC Period 6
 There are many objects always in motion. Speed is a scalar quantity which

measure how fast and object is moving. Time is also a scalar quantity because it

represents duration. An object with a high speed would generally cover a greater distance

in a shorter amount to time compared to an object moving at a slow speed. Speed is

almost like Velocity but vector quantity and represents a certain direction. The velocity of

an object is the speed at which it travels in a certain direction. For example if an object

moves forward it velocity would be positive. If it instead moves backwards its velocity

would be negative. When an object is moving the velocity of an object may change as

time progresses. This change in velocity over a certain period of time is known as

acceleration. As an object travels from its starting position to its final position the

difference between these two positions is the displacement. The objective of this lab was

to graphically analyze the motion of a moving body down a ramp and obtain the

displacement and the acceleration of the moving body from its Displacement vs. Time

graph and Velocity vs. Time graph.

The slopes of the graphs from Part III have different meanings. The slope of the

Displacement vs. Time Graph represented velocity because when finding slope the

difference in displacement was divided by the difference in time and this is the equation

used to find velocity. The slope of the Velocity vs. Time graph, however, represented the

acceleration of the cart.

The Velocity vs. Time graph shows many things about the way the cart was

moving. At first the instantaneous velocity of the cart kept increasing and the speed it

took to cross the photogate decreased. It increased from .506m/s to 1.11m/s until the

Main photogate was placed at 0.80m, 0.50 m away from the starting point. Then after that
when the photogate was placed and 0.80m and 0.90m the cart passed through the

photogate in the same amount of time and the instantaneous velocities were the same.

When this was plotted on the graph the line between the two points is parallel to the x-

axis. Then during the thirds phase of motion the cart started to pass through the

photogate, taking more time and the instantaneous velocities started to decrease.

These three phases of motion show the acceleration, deceleration, and zero

acceleration of the cart. When the instantaneous velocities are plotted relative to time the

graph curves upwards and this is the first phase. Since the line is increasing it shows that

during this time interval the cart was accelerating. Then during the second phase of

motion the instantaneous velocities were the same and the line was parallel to the x-axis

showing that at this time interval there was zero acceleration. Then afterwards the

instantaneous velocities suddenly decrease and when plotted look like an upside down V

and this is the segment of time during which the cart was decelerating.
 The slope when the time was .8 seconds for the Distance vs. Time graph was

calculated to be about .65m/s. However, the slope for the Velocity vs. Time graph was

calculated to be 1.01m/s2. The percent error calculated for the velocities between the

Displacement vs. Time graph and the Velocity vs. time graph was 44%.

Based on the Velocity vs. Time graph, the motion of the cart is parabolic and moved in a

specific pattern. In other words, the cart's velocity increases and decreases over a certain

amount of time. For example, at first the velocity of the cart increases until it reaches its

highest point and then it slows down until it comes to a stop. The graph shows that the
cart accelerated at first, then it stopped for a little while and then it finally slowed down

and came to a stop. This is how the motion of the cart went. This probably happened

because there were many sources of error such as friction as well as air resistance.