Coffee Filter Lab
It is as simple as Newton's second law which states that the acceleration of an object depends on two variable which are net force and mass. As mass of an object increases, its acceleration will lower, and inversely if the force of an object increases, its acceleration will increase. Low acceleration means that objects with high mass would take less time to hit the floor.
In this lab, we observed the relationship between the weight of an object and the time it takes to reach the ground. We dropped coffee filters from a specific height, and recorded the motion using a motion sensor. We hypothesized that the more filters you add, the lower the time of flight will be.
3 Filters:
|
In our second drop test, we dropped 2 pieces of paper filters stacked on on top of each other. Since they were adjoined, the amount of air resistance in this drop test was the same as the amount of air resistance when there was only one filter. The air resistance stayed the same because we did not change the shape of the object. However by adding another paper filter, we noticed that the time of flight decreased significantly.
|
4 Filters:
|
In our third drop test, we dropped 3 paper filters stacked on top of each other. The time of flight was even lower than the two filter tests. Our hypothesis is slowly coming to be true as we are starting to notice this trend of adding more mass and this resulting in the time decreasing to reach the floor.
|
When we dropped four filters at the same time, it was clear that the more filters you add the lower the time of flight is. This shows that our hypothesis was right as we had said that if we increase the mass of the object by adding more filters, it will eventually lead to the time to reach the floor decreasing. This of course was under the contingency that the shape of the object does not change as that will affect the air resistance.
|
Data from the Motion Sensors
This data shows us the relationship between the mass of an object and the time of flight. Data was gathered from the lab by dropping filter(s) about 1.5m above the motion sensor. As seen on top, we started off with one filter, and recorded the time, and then moved on to two and then three and so on. An average of three tests per weight is recorded to obtain an accurate average velocity from the coffee filters.