BCC g Project

The team presented the PowerPoint. The Physics professors seemed very pleased and interested in our project. Below are the slides from our presentation. Now the team is looking for a new intern because a member is leaving and will not be present in Summer 2. The next modified physics experiment for Summer 2 will be the air track. Currently the team is brainstorming. Blogged by Jennifer Mikulko

We finished editing the manual, made a few copies for the presentation tomorrow and practiced the presentation.

The lab manual instructions have been successfully edited and adjusted according to the notes from the focus group testing. More pictures and diagrams are added to the instructions to make execution easier. One such picture is depicted below: Figure 1. One of the newly added pictures that locates all of the necessary icons listed in the instructions for using PASCO Capstone to analysis the recorded videos. Alongside, Jennifer continued to work on the PowerPoint presentation. Tomorrow, the team will rehearse and prepare for their presentation on Thursday.

We continue to edit the lab manual instructions and are working on our presentation slides.

Image 1. Image from Google Images The team watched the STEM Student Scholars program's presentations today which took some time from our scheduled meeting hours. Afterwards, we fixed our lab manual with the problems noted from yesterday's volunteers. The g project's presentation will be 1 week from today; therefore, a PowerPoint to present has begun. Blogged by Jennifer Mikulko

The team gathered six students, with the help of a small incentive (delicious homemade cheesecake brownies), to have them test out the experiment we made. As seen below in figure 1, the students are reading/reviewing the theory of the experiment. Figure 1: students reading the lab manual Next they split up into groups of 3 and started recording the different trials. Figure 2 & 3: The two groups conduct their experiments As noted by our team members, some of the steps in our procedure were misinterpreted by the students. Later on this week, we will be reviewing/editing our labs to make it clearer and easier to understand correctly. Next, the two teams moved on to analyzing the videos using Pasco Capstone as seen below. Figure 4,5,6: Students using Pasco Capstone As seen from figures 4-6, the students are using our laptops to analyze the videos since we have the Pasco Capstone Software already downloaded. Our goal, after finalizing the lab m...

The team continued finishing the write up for the manual and began reviewing it today. The plan is to have a few volunteer students test the experiment tomorrow to check whether the instructions are written clearly. Originally, the main objective of the experiment was to determine g experimentally and check its dependence on mass. However, after calculating the drag coefficient of the falling ping-pong ball two days ago, the team realized that including these calculations in the actual experiment would be a good idea so that the students can truly see the effect of air resistance on the experimental g . Therefore, the instructions for the drag coefficient calculations were added to the experimental procedure today. Click on the link provided below to view the write up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dVBxBllWetZOKvtCrrmX3iw9x8DnTo4kGrvGxE5-iNk

The lab manual for " Uniform Accelerated Motion: Measurement of g" experiment has been edited with more information. We plan to gather volunteers to test the experiment using the lab manual that we created on Wednesday June 20, 2018 in room S-324. A sign up sheet is posted in the STEM room. Additionally, the phone holder for clamps is created on a program called Fusion 360 to be 3D printed. We seek permission to 3D print the design. Blogged by Jennifer Mikulko

Day 15:  Drag Calculation + Progress on Manual After watching (and for Jan Mark, participating in) the afternoon presentations, we worked on 2 projects.  We are nearly done editing the experimental procedure section of our lab manual write-up of the Free-Fall experiment.  The complete write-up should be ready by early next week so that we can get volunteers to try the experiment. We were also able to use the ping pong ball data to calculate the drag coefficient, C, for a ping pong ball. Ping Pong ball data When air resistance is taken into account, the equation for acceleration of a falling body becomes: where ρ air is the density of air, A is the cross sectional area of the falling object and v is its instantaneous velocity. By plotting a vs the velocity squared, C can be derived from the slope. For typical falling objects, the range of C values is from 0.4 to 1. This graph is seen (will be inserted) below and the calculations give: Givin...

Today, the team continued working on the lab experiment write up -this included adding the data tables and procedures to do the lab properly. In conjunction to this, the group also did trials in different locations in the lab room and used Pasco Capstone to find the g value like any other trials we did so far. From the trials and data collected today, we confirmed that the experiment can be conducted with any background as long there is enough contrast between background and object so that it shows up on the video. Furthermore, the camera should not be zoomed in since it causes the clarity of the video to drop; this can cause an error in determining where the ball and meter stick is in the video. Finally, the group tackled the problem with air resistance. We wanted to confirm, using the data from our trials, what air resistance does to the acceleration of the object. First, we initialized the vertical force vectors as mg - (1/2)CApv^2 = ma. Then we simplified to get a = g - (1/2m)C...

After exploring and reducing the error sources as well as checking for reproducibility in last few weeks, the team has begun writing up the actual experiment and instructions to be added to the Lab Manual for the Physics 186 course. The aim is to write the theory and instructions in such a manner that a first-semester physics student would be able to execute the experiment with the expected results. The experiment's title has been kept the same as previously: "Uniformly Accelerated Motion: Measurement of g ."The write up opens with an advanced study assignment, followed by the introduction and objectives. Next is the list of equipment needed for the experiment. Then, there will be a detailed theory section informing students of the gravitational acceleration and how to determine its value. The next page will list the procedure and instructions to follow through the experiment, followed by tables to record the data measurements. In the end, the students will be asked to ...

A plastic meter stick in the shape of a square tube replaces the regular wooden meter stick on a pole. The purpose is to not have the meter stick-tube bent as the regular meter stick was slightly bent.  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  Phone Holder for Clamps A new invention by Jan Talingdan aided the video recorded trials. Hand crafted with the material of wood, t he Phone Holder accessory for clamps is available for sale. For more information and to place an order, please contact bccgprogect@gmail.com . Please note, we are not liable for any phone damages with the use of our product.  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Five trials of three balls were recorded today using the two new advances of equipment. The three balls trialed were steel, ping-pong, and golf ball. The videos recorded have high ac...

Today was a short day after presentations.  Shivani and Jan Mark completed calculations of Tuesday's data which is summarized in the table below.   Effects of Rotating Camera Stand Front, Back and to One Side Material Back Pitch Forward Pitch 20 o Rotation math vertical 30o Rotation math on spot Lead 9.74 9.61 9.61 9.13 9.61 9.84 9.78 9.58 9.79 9.24 9.55 9.73 9.22 9.62 Steel 9.62 9.63 9.83 9.65 9.58 Golf 9.62 9.48 9.4 9.68 8.71 9.6 9.65 9.43 9.43 9.55 9.59 Wood 9.52 9.4 9.67 9.45 9.38 9.59 Plastic 8.83 8.48 8.98 8.77 8.48 Ping Pong 8.44 8.31 8.33 8.13  The last ...