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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:00:43 -0500
From: "Bob LaMontagne" <rlamont@postoffice.providence.edu>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Independent Variables
To: "'Forum for Physics Educators'"
<phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>, <thecraftyphantom@australia.edu>
Message-ID: <001801c6fcfd$56952c20$9239010a@providence.col>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I agree with Ludwik - I would simply avoid use of the words dependent and
independent. Yesterday, I did a conservation of energy lab with the Intro
Physics students. We drop a ball into a bucket of sand and create craters.
If a fixed percentage of the potential energy of the ball becomes
potential
energy of the lifted sand, the fourth power of the crater diameter should
be
proportional to the height through which the ball fell. The students
prepare
a graph of the height versus the 4th power of the diameter of the crater
and
it turns out to be surprisingly linear - and in a log-log plot the slope
is
4. However, both the height of the ball and the diameter of the crater are
measured values. It really isn't appropriate to consider one as dependent
and the other as independent. They just are what they are - measured
quantities.
Bob at PC