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Phy223 Lab 3: Modeling the Motion of Real Falling Objects

Introduction
In class you have or will discuss the dropping of an ideal object near the surface of Earth (or near
any gravitating body in general), and stated that the object’s motion can be modeled with uniform
acceleration. As we’ll learn later this is only an approximation, even for an ideal case; plus it does
not take air resistance into account. The purpose of today’s lab is to take precise data of two
different falling objects in order to investigate how close real falling objects come to the ideal case.
These two objects are expected to experience very different levels of air resistance.

At a minimum, you need to drop one old textbook and a lid from a paper ream box. You should be
able to set up the motion sensor and the 550 interface. You should also be able to open the
Capstone software and begin taking data. If you have any trouble with this, refer back to last
week’s lab (Linear Motion).

You will design your own data-taking procedure for this lab. But DO NOT drop the textbook
onto the motion sensor! Find a different way to acquire position vs. time data for a dropping
object.

Hypothesis Testing
Since we’ve already introduced the ideal free-fall model (objects falling near the surface of the
Earth move approximately with a uniform acceleration of 9.81 m/s2 downward), we have a
mathematical model to test. In science, we call this “hypothesis testing”. The idea is that you will
first take only that portion of your data in which the object is falling, and let Excel find the best-fit
to that data using an appropriate model for uniform acceleration. We will then use a statistical test
to see if the data deviate significantly from that assumed model.

There are only two possible outcomes of a hypothesis test: 1) we reject the hypothesis, or 2) we fail
to reject the hypothesis. There is no such thing as “accepting” the hypothesis, nor is it appropriate
to use words like, “correct”, “right”, “true”, etc. when referring to a hypothesis.

In science, when somebody proposes a new hypothesis, the relevant scientific community begins
trying everything they can think of to disprove it (this should also be true of the person or group
who has proposed the hypothesis). The successful hypotheses are those that have not yet been
disproved. So the goal of today’s lab is to do everything you can to disprove the ideal free-fall
model. The following section describes one important parameter to use in this process.

Residuals
Excel’s best-fit equation can be used to find the “predicted” value of one physical quantity (the “y”
value, or the “response variable”) given an input value of a second variable. In this case, the
response variable is vertical position and the “predictor variable” is time. The residual is given by:
𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑙 = 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 − 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒

Use Excel to calculate the residual for each time step. The sum of all residuals always equals zero
(equal amounts positive and negative), and therefore has no value! To bring value and quantify the
amount by which a set of data deviates from a model, we square each residual. But the size of the
resulting number would increase with sample size, so we divide by the number of data points. But
the resulting number would still have units which differ from the physical quantity being studied, so
we take a square root. This is called the “Room Mean Squared Error”, and is given by:

𝑁
1
𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸 = √ ∑(𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑖 − 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖 )2
𝑁
𝑖=1

One important statistical test is to plot the residuals against the predictor variable. Nearly all of the
residuals (~95%) should reside within two standard deviations (nearly the same thing as the
RMSE). Another important statistical test is more subjective: the residual plot (residuals against
predictor) should not show any patterns, or overall shape.

Your Group’s Task


After your group has acquired data for both dropping objects, discuss whether you have any reasons
to reject the ‘ideal hypothesis’ (uniform acceleration of 9.81 m/s2 downward).

Even better – are you able to propose an alternate hypothesis that is consistent with your data?

NOTES:
See http://mathbitsnotebook.com/Algebra1/StatisticsReg/ST2Residuals.html for some basic
statistics.

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