Re: Graphing by Hand

[herbgottlieb@juno.com]

 John Gastineau  writes:
> it seems to me that we're having a semantics problem. Does "graphing 
> by hand" include the exercise of _sketching_ a qualitative prediction of

> your results, with nothing more than a couple of axes, labels, and a
quick
> curve drawn to reflect your ideas of how the data will look? If so, 
> then I think most of the MBL/CBL users ALWAYS have students "graph by
hand"
> first, and we have no disagreement.

Just for fun now, see if you can make a sketch of this graph....

A small bar magnet, north pole down, is held 0.5 meter above the 
]center of  a vertical  air core solenoid. The solonoid is  0.5 meter 
long and sufficiently wide to allow the bar magnet to fall through 
without touching its coils.  A  voltmeter (or an oscilloscope) is 
attached to the  ends of the solenoid coils.

Sketch a voltage vs time graph from the time that the magnet is 
released, falls freely  through the solenoid and emerges 0.5 
meter below the solenoid bottom.

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where solving this problem was one of the most  enjoyable 
and challenging  highlights of our Advanced Placement Physics Course)