RYERSON UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
LAB REPORT
FOR
PCS 211 SECTION 14
TITLE OF EXPERIMENT: NEWTON’S SECOND LAW
EXPERIMENTERS: NHU HOANG NGUYEN 500772284
NEHA KHAN 500798797
AUTHORS OF THIS REPORT: NHU HOANG NGUYEN
NEHA KHAN
EXPERIMENT PERFORMED ON: 24th OCTOBER, 2016
REPORT SUBMITTED ON: 31ST OCTOBER, 2016
TA'S NAME: JULIA PEARSE
I. Objective and Background
The purpose of this experiment was to study the relationship between force and acceleration
in a friction free environment. The results from this experiment were subsequently used to
illustrate the concept of mass. The experiment used a metal frictionless track. The track was air
cushioned which allowed the slider to glide along the track with negligible friction. Different
amounts of weights were placed on a hanger to determine the relationship between mass and
force. The resultant force increased as the mass increased on the hanger. The acceleration was
also calculated for each experimental run by using two photo gates, which measured the time and
the speed of the glider as it passed over the frictionless track. The acceleration increased as the
mass on the hanger increased. The main objective of this was to prove Newton’s second law of
motion theory which states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the
magnitude of the net force and inversely proportional to its mass [1]