Thursday, September 10

Today in class, we started off by taking reassessment 3. After that, we learned about acceleration. Acceleration is the time rate at which velocity changes. We looked at a velocity vs. time graph with a diagonal line with a positive slope.The slope of the graph was acceleration. The graph showed constant acceleration. We also went over the fact that if you take the are of the figure made from the line and the x axis, this figures out displacement, or change in x.
Next, we looked at the acceleration of a basketball using a motion sensor. First, we dropped the ball while the motion sensor was hanging above the board pointing down. We mad two graphs: position vs. time and velocity vs. time. We figured out the acceleration of the basketball, which was 9063 meters per second squared. Then, we threw the ball towards the motion sensor and made the two graphs. We also repeated this for the bounce of the ball.
After this, we split off into groups and did a lab involving stopping distance. We pushed a felt covered block through a photogate and took data: the velocity and the stopping distance. We measured the stopping distance by measureing the distance from the edge of the photogate to the front end of the block. We answered some questions on the lab sheet, one including knowing the difference between average velocity and instantaneous velocity.

The next blogger is Erika.