Jeffrey Henderson | Acceleration due to gravity with homemade project | Isaac Newton's law of motion

This project looks at Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion and demonstrates how forces change the motion of an object, how the force of gravity gives weight to all masses, how forces cause acceleration and how forces work in collisions. Therefore, the experiment considers unbalanced forces acting upon both objects. Newton's Second Law is concerned with unbalanced forces. Unbalanced forces produce acceleration. The greater the unbalanced force the greater the acceleration. In the final drawing the speed of the falling object is such that the force associated with air resistance is the same as that of the gravitational force the forces are now balanced. At this point, the object stops accelerating and simply continues to fall at a constant velocity.
A very interesting and unique homemade project measuring and calculating an object falling to the earth’s surface in normal atmosphere conditions. Two high precision Omron photoelectric sensors are used to accurately measure 20 mm balls falling from a height of 1500 mm to 0 mm in 100 mm intervals. The sensors consist primarily of an emitter for emitting light and a receiver for receiving light. When emitted light is interrupted or reflected by the sensing object, it changes the amount of light that arrives at the receiver. The receiver detects this change and converts it to an electrical output controlling multiple low powered relays. These relays control the micro-controller of a high precision stopwatch that has the ability of measuring 1/1000th of a second. An electromagnet is used to release the ball through the photoelectric beams were the stopwatch is started and stopped with high precision. This electromagnet stops any unwanted side forces being exerted into the ball when its released. The objects fall due to gravity but other factors such as air resistance act on the ball giving negative acceleration. Initial velocity, acceleration at 100 mm intervals and terminal velocity (t) are evaluated of both a chrome steel ball and a wooden ball with the same radius.