This experiment measured the rotational inertia of a metal disk by having it revolve at constant speed on a rotating body connected to a pulley. Tests were done with the disk flat and with an additional weight, and with the disk perpendicular. The moment of inertia was calculated theoretically and experimentally for each test, and percent errors between 1-3% were found, likely due to inaccuracies in the smart timer and difficulty achieving a perfectly flat surface. The experiment demonstrated that changing applied forces can change an object's acceleration but not its moment of inertia, which depends on mass and orientation.
This experiment measured the rotational inertia of a metal disk by having it revolve at constant speed on a rotating body connected to a pulley. Tests were done with the disk flat and with an additional weight, and with the disk perpendicular. The moment of inertia was calculated theoretically and experimentally for each test, and percent errors between 1-3% were found, likely due to inaccuracies in the smart timer and difficulty achieving a perfectly flat surface. The experiment demonstrated that changing applied forces can change an object's acceleration but not its moment of inertia, which depends on mass and orientation.
This experiment measured the rotational inertia of a metal disk by having it revolve at constant speed on a rotating body connected to a pulley. Tests were done with the disk flat and with an additional weight, and with the disk perpendicular. The moment of inertia was calculated theoretically and experimentally for each test, and percent errors between 1-3% were found, likely due to inaccuracies in the smart timer and difficulty achieving a perfectly flat surface. The experiment demonstrated that changing applied forces can change an object's acceleration but not its moment of inertia, which depends on mass and orientation.
This experiment measured the rotational inertia of a metal disk by having it revolve at constant speed on a rotating body connected to a pulley. Tests were done with the disk flat and with an additional weight, and with the disk perpendicular. The moment of inertia was calculated theoretically and experimentally for each test, and percent errors between 1-3% were found, likely due to inaccuracies in the smart timer and difficulty achieving a perfectly flat surface. The experiment demonstrated that changing applied forces can change an object's acceleration but not its moment of inertia, which depends on mass and orientation.
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1/ 7
ABSTRACT
This experiment is all about the measuring the rotational inertia of a rigid body. Making something like a disk revolve in a constant speed is a great setup for measuring the rotational inertia of a body, in this case the metal disk. This topic has a lot of applications, from a moving car to playing yoyo. The main setup composing of the rotating body, a metal disk and a pulley, making it possible to measure the amount of inertia the disk is experiencing while it is revolving. There are varieties of tests done in determining the value of inertia, the first one is where the disk is flat on the rotating body, then the disk has an additional weight on it, and lastly when the disk is placed perpendicularly with the horizontal. The conditions on each test are the same. Weights are tied and released, and then the acceleration is measured using the formula given on the data sheet. As the body accelerates slowly for the body itself is against the rotational movement caused by Inertia which is the property of matter by which a body remains in a continuous state unless there is an external force applied to it. OBJECTIVES
The main objective done in this experiment regarding the Moment of Inertia, by using the three conditions, determined the Moment of Inertia and computed for the percentage error.
PROCEDURES
This is the setup for this experiment.
- Metal disk - Metal ring - Rotating body - Set of weights with hanger - Super pulley - Photogates - Smart timer The setup for the three tests are almost the same, what only differs is the orientation of the disk. The disk is placed in three orientations, the first one is where the disk is placed parallel with the horizontal with the ring on top of it. The second one is like the first one but with the absence of the ring. The last one is where the disk is placed perpendicular with the horizontal.
On each trial, the photogates are setup with its setting on acceleration, linear pulley. Using different weights, the mass are added onto the mass hanger until it starts to spin on a constant velocity. This will be recorded as the friction mass. After that, heavier masses were used and each acceleration were recorded.
Before using the data collected, the actual value of the Moment of Inertia were computed using the formulas below:
1 I Disk = M Disk R2 2
1 I Ring = M Ring (R 21+ R 22) 2
1 I Disk = M Disk R2 4
– (the disk rotated about the diameter)
I Total =I Disk + I Ring
1 1 I Total = M Disk R 2+ M Ring ( R21 + R22 ) 2 2
Where: M – Mass of the body
R – Radius
I – Moment of Inertia
After that, the Experimental value of the Moment of Inertia was computed using this formula:
m ( g−a ) 2 I= r a
Where:
I – Moment of inertia
a – Acceleration
g – Acceleration due to gravity
m – Mass of the hanging weights
r – Radius
The Moment of Inertia of the ring is computed by subtracting the
experimental value of the Moment of Inertia of the disk from the total experimental value of the Moment of Inertia.
ERROR ANALYSIS What I think that caused inaccuracy in our tests is the smart timer. We used the same weight but I gives different values for the acceleration. This caused us to repeat some of our tests. Another is that it is hard to find a flat surface for the rotating body. With those circumstances, we are able to pull of 1.58% of error in the first part of the experiment, 2.725% in the second, 0.63% in the third, and 0.086% in the last part.
APPLICATIONS
There are a lot of things related to Inertia. The most simple is riding a car.
As the car stops, your body remains in a uniform motion that causes you to move forward every time it brakes. The external force acting on your body is the break which causes instability on the system.
Another example is a top.
As the top spins, it continuous on a circular motion. It only stops until the external force, which is friction, overcomes the rotational force of the top.
Lastly, the effect of earthquakes on a house.
In figure 1, the house wants to remain in its resting position, and with that, when an external force, which is the earthquake, the house does not fully follow on the current motion because of inertia, which causes the house to break down.
CONCLUSION Based on the results, the Moment of Inertia of an object is constant. You can change the force applied to it, hence changing its acceleration but it will still not affect the Moment of Inertia.
In the experiment, the additional weight on the pan which causes rotational motion causes the disk to accelerate faster, but based on the result, it is still near the actual value of the Moment of Inertia. Even though there is a little percent error, this is still accurate because this inaccuracy is caused by some disregarded circumstances like, the friction of the rotating body, the exact flat surface, and the inaccurate smart timer.
All in all, the Moment of inertia is the resistance of an object to change its current state. It is dependent on the mass of the object, the heavier the object, the greater the external force needed to change the objects current state. When it comes to Rotational Moment of Inertia, the orientation of how the object rotates becomes a factor because there are some orientation like in the experiment where the center is on the diameter, the weight is not, distributed which result to a weaker Moment of Inertia.
