Super fun awesome spectacular ridiculous amazing.....physics -__-
Entry posted by Lochs
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In the beginning of the year, we learned about mechanics and solving for initial/final velocity, distance/displacement, acceleration, and time. I remember Mr. Fullerton mentioning to the class something about the time it takes for a bowling ball to hit the ground in comparison to a tennis ball, dropped from the same height. Obviously, since acceleration due to gravity is the same everywhere near the surface of the Earth, these times will be the same, however I wanted to conduct my own experiment to test this theory further.
To mimic this experiment, I asked my father and my little cousin, Caitlyn, to jump from my deck (about 4 feet high) to the ground and I would time them to see if their difference in weight would create a shorter or longer time depending on the person. At first, it seemed like Mr. Fullerton's theory was wrong, because it took longer for Caitlyn to hit the ground. I then realized that I asked them to both JUMP off the deck, not simply drop. Since Caitlyn is 16 and is able to jump fairly high, her time in the air was much longer than my dad's since he can barely jump two inches. I fixed my experiment so that they would just step off the deck onto the ground, and the theory proved to be true. It took both my dad and my cousin about 0.5s to drop to the ground.
With my experiment, I put Mr. Fullerton's claim about mechanics to the test and I now understand how the bowling ball would take the same amount of time to hit the ground as the tennis ball. Seeing this experiment in a real setting helped me understand the concept of mechanics better so I am now able to visualize physics questions that are asking for this material.
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