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Lab Report 1

The purpose of the lab was to demonstrate how to measure the height of a building using a stopwatch instead of a meter stick. Materials used included a stopwatch, pencil, and the building. Multiple trials were conducted dropping the pencil from the top of the building and timing its fall to calculate the height. Calculations based on the gravitational constant and average time of 0.936 seconds determined the height of the building to be 4.2929 meters with an uncertainty of 0.0193 meters. Sources of error included human timing inconsistencies.

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Tyler Vollmer
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51 views2 pages

Lab Report 1

The purpose of the lab was to demonstrate how to measure the height of a building using a stopwatch instead of a meter stick. Materials used included a stopwatch, pencil, and the building. Multiple trials were conducted dropping the pencil from the top of the building and timing its fall to calculate the height. Calculations based on the gravitational constant and average time of 0.936 seconds determined the height of the building to be 4.2929 meters with an uncertainty of 0.0193 meters. Sources of error included human timing inconsistencies.

Uploaded by

Tyler Vollmer
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tyler Vollmer August 25th, 2010

Partners: Kaylah William, AP Physics, Santiago High School CA USA

Finding the Height of a Building

Introduction: The lab purpose was to find the height of the building. The lab was trying to prove that
people can measure a height without a meter stick but with a stopwatch. Overall, the lab was to
demonstrate how one can measure with a stopwatch.

Materials and Methods: The lab required a Stopwatch, A pencil, and a building to complete it. The lab
required to drop an item from the top of the building and then measure the time to find the height of
the building.

Results:

Trial # Time for the pencil to Deviation


drop
Trial 1 .89 sec .046 sec
Trial 2 .96 sec .024 sec
Trial 3 .85 sec .086 sec
Trial 4 .80 sec .136 sec
Trial 5 1.00 sec .064 sec
Trial 6 .99 sec .054 sec
Trial 7 1.01 sec .074 sec
Trial 8 .89 sec .046 sec
Trial 9 1.02 sec .084 sec
Trial 10 .95 sec .014 sec
average .936 sec .0628 sec

Given:

∆ y =height of buliding=?

m
a=g=gravitational constant=9.8
s2

t=time for the pencil ¿ drop=.926 sec

m
V i=initial velocity=0
s

The height of the building

1
∆ y =V i t + a t 2
2
∆ y =0+ ( 4.9 ) (.9362)

∆ y =4.2929 m

The uncertainty

1
∆ y =V i t + a t 2
2

∆ y =0+ ( 4.9 ) (.06282)

∆ y =.0193 m

The height of the building is 4.2929±.0193 m.

Discussion: The lab required multiple trials to come up with correct information. A nice source of error
is using the dropper person as the timer also. A nice way to come out with more efficient numbers is to
let the recorder do the stopwatch.

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