Experiment 1

Objects at Rest Remain at Rest


Physicist Symone Gladden
Physicist Yanique Tomlinson
Physicist Darren Gibson
April 9,2008
Section 11-1





Objective: Do objects at rest really remain at rest unless acted upon by external force?

Hypothesis: The cart will move because of an external force.

Materials: Hall’s cart, wooden board, a 12" ruler


Procedure:
1. Conduct your hypothesis before you do the experiment.
2. Set the wooden ramp on a table with about 12” of the ramp extending over the edge of the tables.
3. Place the Hall’s cart on the part of the ramp that is on the table from under the cart.
4. The cart at this point is at rest. What do you predict will happen if the ramp is pulled out from under the cart?
5. Standing tone side, quickly jerk the ramp out from underneath the Hall’s cart. Try this 4-5 times. Record your observations each time.
6. Analyze your results. What happened to the cart when the ramp is removed? Was your hypothesis correct? Does the cart follow Newton’s first law for body of rest? Record your results and conclusion

Data: Trial 1-----the cart dropped
Trial 2----- the cart dropped with no movement
Trial 3-----the cart dropped
Trial 4-----the cart dropped then moved backwards

Graphs and pictures




There was a question that needed to be answered. Is Newton's first law correct? Well to answer that question there was an experiment that would prove his law would be true. As a group we chose to put a cart on top of a wooden ramp. Afterwards we jerked the wooden ramp from under the car to see if it would move. Our results supported Newton's first law. On the first and second trial the cart just dropped. The third, the cart dropped also. However on the last trial the cart dropped and moved backwards. The cart dropping towards the table was a type of force. Another force was the table pushing up towards the cart. From the experiment it showed us that if we did not jerk the ramp from under the cart it would not have moved because there was no other external forces active.
My hypothesis was correct. The cart did move because of an external force. The cart follows Newton's first law for a body at rest. By doing this experiment I learned how to work together as a group to try and prove a point. I already new that an object would not move unless some type of other force was making it. To improve the experiment I would have put a mass weight in the inside.