Acceleration down an inclined plane - graphing motion (NCPQ)

Video of a steel ball rolling down an incline plane with uniform acceleration. The ball is released from different distances up the incline and the time is measured to reach the bottom. The experiment has been filmed and the video analysed using LoggerPro to get accurate times.

In the second part, the data have been plotted using Excel to generate two graphs: the first is a displacement/time graph with displacement on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. The relationship is shown to be y proportional to x squared as expected for uniform acceleration. The equation for the trendline shows this clearly. In the second graph the final velocity is calculated by working out the average velocity and doubling it. A plot of final velocity vs time gives a linear graph. I make some comments about systematic error and how they can be reduced.

Experiment filmed at Moreton Bay College by Dr Richard Walding, author of New Century Physics for Queensland, 3rd ed, 2019. Oxford University Press. A big thank-you to my Year 12 Physics student Abby Blair for helping make this video.

This experiment is Experiment 10.2 "Constructing and interpreting displacement-time and velocity-time graphs" page 485-487 of the Unit 1 & 2 text. ISBN 9780190310158.