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Re: Newton's 2nd law Lab



At 11:36 10/12/98 -0500, Herb Gottlieb wrote:
I cannot understand the comments of the parent
that transferring mass from the cart to the hanging
weight affects the amount of mass that is accelerating.

The entire system in motion consists of a cart on a
horizontal table and a string which passes over a
"frictionless-massless" pulley with a hanging mass
(weight) fastened to the string at the lower end that
supplies an accelerating force. (Force probe???).


The force sensor is attached to the cart, and the string pulls on the force
sensor. So what is different from the old experiment is that the
accelerating force is the tension in the string, not the mg pulling on the
hanging mass, and so the mass of the cart alone must be used, not the cart
plus hanging mass. Of course tension in the string is not equal to mg.

Mark




Mark Sylvester
United World College of the Adriatic
34013 Duino TS
Italy.
msylvest@spin.it
tel: +39 040 3739 255