Conservation of energy
Kesun
Experiment Date: 23 October 2024
Report Date: 23 October 2024
Introduction:
This lab is used to measure the conservation of energy of the mass-cart-
earth system.
It determined the speed and moved distance of the cart on a low friction air
track at a certain time by using the photogate detect a series of black-clear
bars on track. Then we use them to calculate the kinetic energy and
potential energy of the system, to get total energy for each time frame.
Theory:
−dPE=dKE
( )
2
( M +m ) dh
dt
−mgdh=
2
dKE + dPE=0
Expected:
d E total
=0
dt
Procedure:
there were 2 attempts. One part is using the 20g weight hanging block to
pull the cart, another one is using 40g weight hanging block instead. Once
put the cart at a given location on the track, then let hanging block start
dropping. Then the detector will collect the data about the when, and how
fast the cart pass when it through each section.
Now we got the relatively time frame and its speed for cart when it passes
through each black segment. Then we use the length of one segment which
is some segments’ length measured by ruler to divide the number of
segments to multiply each speed and number of segments it passed; to get
the actual physical SI unit value of the speed and the distance it passed of
the cart.
After that, we got the potential and kinetic energy for each data, also include
their uncertainty.
Discussion:
Deriving potential energy:
U ( x )=−mgdx
( )
2
1 dx
K ( x )= ( M + m )∗
2 dt
dU dx
=−mg
dt dt
( M +m )∗dx 2
∗d x
dK dt
=
dt dt
2
2
mg d x
= 2 =a
M+m dt
( M +m )∗dx
∗mg
dK dt dx
= = mg
dt M+m dt
Etotal =E+U
dE dE dU dx dx
= + = mg−mg =0
dt dt dt dt dt
System errors:
Friction: If the pully has friction, then it will do the negative work on the
system because it always tended to disspate the kinetic energy of the
system which cause the dE/dt becomes not 0 but is negative, present a
decreasing slope on the plots
Massive pulley: If pully have unignorable mass, then there will be countable
amount of kinetic energy goes on to the pulley from the system we
measured, which also reduced kinetic energy of the system, also cause dE/dt
becomes not 0 but is negative, present a decreasing slope on the plots.
Inverse process: if the process inversed, the error impact will still be similar,
the friction and mass of the pully are all have the tendency to reduce some
kinetic energy from the system, which cause a decreasing slope.
Data visualization:
Expectation: About the kinetic energy vs potential energy graph, it will be
like in this form:
K ( x )=−U ( x )+ C
(x is potential energy and y is kinetic energy)
My data wouldn’t match this because the dissipating of the energy from the
system by the environment impact, its slope will be a bit larger than the -1.
I could know the effect of the friction from the environment more directly by
the total energy vs time graph, because it should be a 0 slope line if there is
not anytime purely dissipating or adding energy on the system.
Acceleration:
a ( M +m )=F g =mg
mg
=a
M+m
By using this, we can get acceleration vs m/(M+m) plot, with slope g
Result& Conclusion:
Due to the friction force from the pulley also some on the air, we got a
negative slope total energy vs time plot line with slope -0.035 from the part
with 20g block, which is not inside the uncertainty range 0.00167. with 40g
block, we have the slope line -0.06 which is even more negative, and is not
within the uncertainty range 0.0033. Means the friction have a decent
amount of impact on this experiment.