Unit 3. acceleration.

Today in physics we did two labs. For the first one we had to roll a volleyball down a slant, we used our table, and record the motion. We then graphed it and saw that the more the ball rolled the faster it would get. From this we learned about Galileo and his ideas about gravity and acceleration. He basically said that if two items are dropped they will gain the same amount of speed in the same amount of time. We tested this by dropping a volleyball and tennis ball at the same time and they landed at the same time as well. However when we tried it with paper it didn't work because of the air pressure. The second lab we did also used the motion sensors. The goal was to throw a ball above the sensor and try to catch it at the same level. Our graphs showed that the ball moved fast, slow, stop, slow then fast again. We learned that earth's gravity is always pulling objects down. So technically when you are throwing a ball up it is getting slower because gravity is pulling it towards the ground, that is also why it speeds up as it is coming down.

This is from the first lab: