Velocity Test

Results:

By-hand Results:

Ping pong ball drop time in seconds:

1m: 0.6, 0.7, 0.6 (average of 0.63 seconds)

2m: 1.0, 0.8, 0.8 (average of 0.86 seconds)

3m: 1.1, 0.8, 0.9 (average of 0.93 seconds)

Golf ball drop time in seconds:

1m: 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 (average of...you guessed it. 0.5 seconds)

2m: 0.7, 0.6, 0.5 (average of 0.6 seconds)

3m: 0.7, 0.9, 0.9 (average of 0.83 seconds)

Velocity of the ping pong ball:

1m: 1.59 m/s

2m: 2.32 m/s

3m: 3.22 m/s

Velocity of the golf ball:

1m: 2 m/s

2m: 3.33 m/s

3m: 3.61 m/s

Force:

Golf ball: 447.468 N

Ping pong ball: 24.5 N

Sensor Results:

Ping pong ball:

The sensor did not pick up at one meter, so I'm going to estimate that the velocity was about 13.2 m/s, which is an average of the two data entries around that.

At about two meters, the velocity of the ping pong ball hit 12 m/s.

Golf ball:

Again, the velocity was not measured at one meter, so an educated guess is at about 5 m/s.

At two meters, the graph recorded the velocity to be -0.076 m/s.

Conclusion:

I accepted my hypothesis, which was that the higher the ball was dropped from, the higher the velocity would be, and that the golf ball would have a higher velocity than the ping pong ball. I accepted my hypothesis because my results showed a higher velocity when a ball was dropped from a higher point, which was because it had a longer distance to cover, and therefore, more time to accelerate. I accepted the other part of my hypothesis because the golf ball's velocity was higher than that of the ping pong ball by a small increment for each test. This was because it had a larger mass. In this experiment, I learned that we may need to be creative to get an experiment to work. This was because we had to work together to come up with a way to keep cords and hands out of the way of the ball as it fell to the ground. The errors we encountered were mostly associated with inaccuracy of data. Humans make mistakes, and therefore the time of the ball drops that we conducted by hand were probably not as accurate as they could have been. However, the sensors were also having problems collecting data correctly, and we had to rely on logic and our own math to figure out some data.