What is it about?
We developed a really neat high accuracy method to measure gravitational acceleration in an undergraduate laboratory program. The experiment is based on water in a cylindrical vessel rotating about its vertical axis at a constant speed. The experiments draws on several undergraduate physics concepts such as kinematics, classical mechanics and geometric optics, which allows students to explore and apply physics concepts in relation.
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Why is it important?
Standard experiments exploring the experimental verification of the value of the gravitational acceleration in undergraduate physics experiments are mostly centered around measuring (in 2D) the period of a pendulum or the kinematics of an object sliding or rolling down an incline. These are not the most exciting experiments and certainly could do with a few orders of magnitude of improvement in the accuracy department. The experiment described here presents a 3D challenge covering multiple physics concepts with high accuracy outcome, ideally suited for small groups project work.
Perspectives
It has been a great fun for our students to scour our old experiments storage room for the bits and pieces from other sets of old experiment to find everything they needed to show the proof of principle of their idea to measure the gravitational acceleration. Combining multiple physics concepts to arrive at the one physical parameter of interest has been a unique learning experiments. Even more rewarding the accuracy of measurement that could be achieved in this experiment.
Dr Jurgen Schulte
University of Technology Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A new method of measuring gravitational acceleration in an undergraduate laboratory program, European Journal of Physics, August 2017, Institute of Physics Publishing,
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6404/aa83d5.
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