The Local Acceleration Due to Gravity as Determined with a Cart and Track

Abstract

The aim of this lab is to determine an experimental value for the local acceleration due to gravity. In order to do this, a cart was released down a track and allowed to pass through two photogates recording the entrance and exit times of the cart. These times along with the length of a light blocking strip on the cart, were used to calculate the acceleration of the cart down the track at various angles, and through linearization, the experimental value for the local acceleration due to gravity was determined to be 10.027 ± 0.312 m/s2. This value has a percent error of only 2.2% from the accepted value of 9.8 m/s2, which proves that this method of determining local acceleration due to gravity can be effective and accurate. Additionally, this experimental value shows how similar the approximation is to the accepted value.