Assignment:
Potential Energy Virtual Laboratory
For laboratory experiment you will visit the following web site and do a series of experiments online that involve the basics of energy. Once you visit the web site read the directions thoroughly before you attempt to answer the questions. You may need to play with the commands and try the ball drop a few times to understand how it works before you start the lab. Once you have completed the exercise, submit your answers to the Dropbox.
Answer Sheet
Initial Values:
Select a Mass of 5 KG
Select an Energy of 200 J
Select EAS = 50%
Questions to think about first: Refer to the online interactive experiment at the bottom of the web page.
What is the height of the ball? (verify by measuring it)
How high will the ball bounce on the first bounce (verify by selecting step and then measuring the height)?
What will be the impact velocity of the ball on the first bounce?
Experimental Steps:
Activate the step button to run the experiment and check your answers to the three questions above.
Reset the experiment and set EAS to 100%. What do you expect will happen?
Reset the experiment and set EAS to 25%. What will be the height of the ball on the first bounce?
Reset the experiment and set Energy to 400 and answer the questions 1-3 above again.
Reset the experiment and change the mass of the ball to 2 kg.
How much higher did the ball rise?
Will the ball have a different velocity on initial impact as in the previous case?
If so, how come? If not, why not?
Which combination of parameters do you think will allow the ball to bounce the most number of times?
Which combinations of parameters produces the lowest and highest initial heights?