Lab II, Problem 1: Mass and Acceleration of a Falling Ball
Yutong Li
September 29, 2013
Physics 1301W, Professor: Paul Haines, TA: Aaberg, Arthur A
Team members: Yutong Li, Johnathan, Henry

Abstract
The mass of the ball should not have any influences on the acceleration when the ball is in free- falling. Balls in same size but not the same masses will fall down in the same height.

Introduction
The National Park plans to use the spherical canisters filled with fire-retarding chemicals to help fight forest fires. Because the chemical inside of the canisters are different, the canisters are varying in different masses. In order to drop the canisters accurately, I have to explore the influences that the masses on the acceleration of the canisters.

Prediction
We predict that the canisters’ acceleration will not be influenced by the different mass of the canisters. The force which will act on the canisters should be just the gravity force. a=g Procedure
I used a baseball and a plastic ball to pretend to be the different kinds of canisters (the same size=7cm). Then, I dropped the two different balls at the same height: 80cm in two different times. Jonathan used the camera to record the process that the two different balls falling down in two different times. Then, Henry used the graphing tool on the computer to draw the Position VS Time graph and Velocity VS Time graph by using the data we collected from the video records of 2 different balls.
Data
The graph of the baseball’s position VS time

The graph of the plastic’s position