Lab Report: Building a Balance
Introduction
According to Galileo Galilei, “It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.” Galileo believed in the idea of experimenting rather than just reading about it. For this reason, this experiment was conducted to understand concepts such as the net torque equaling zero, the relation between mass, density, and volume, as well as the relation between mass and weight via gravity. One of the concepts during the experiment was the net force of torque equaling zero. Torque is dependent on distance of applied force and mass. Since the masses were equal, this caused them to produce the same force. With this, they also stayed steady, meaning the net torque was zero. With this observation, the distance from the axis was the same for both cups. Another one of the concepts seen was the relation between mass, density, and volume. Density is equal to mass over volume. A rearrangement of that formula state that mass is equal to density multiplied by volume. This can be applied to the lab completed to see that the density of water multiplied by the volume of the water was equal to the mass of the coin, so the mass of the coin was directly proportional to the amount of water in the cup. The last is the relation between mass and weight. In outer space, the mass of the object would not change, but the weight would. The experiment would not be