Train Lab

2 Pages 407 Words

Train Lab



Problem- What's the acceleration of the L train?


Materials- Measure meter, stop watches, L train


Procedure- First, the person in charge examines the platform briefly. Then he

takes 11 people and places that at approximate. equal distances from each other over the

entire platform. These are not going to be exactly accurate, as they are just a quickly

formed hypothesis of the “equal” distance people people. Once the people are in

their positions, they are handed a stopwatch by the safety people and are to remain in

these spots until told to do otherwise. The person closest to the “beginning” of the

platform (the first place the train passes coming into the station) is given the measure

meter. Next, as the train enters the station, all stoppers get ready. As soon as the train

starts to move out of the station, all stoppers start their watches and stop their watches

when the back of the train passes them. Then, the person with the measure meter

measures the distance between each person to get the displacement. With the time and

displacement, one can get velocity. Then, we calculate the changes in velocity to find

the accelerations and initial V and final V.


Results/Calculations- Please see attached for calculations

Total Displacement: 148.11 m

Total Time: 17.90 s

Total Velocity: 8.27 m/s

Total Acceleration: .46 m/s 2



Observations:


According to our research, the L train didn’t seem to have a very high acceleration.



Discussion:

- Why did we omit certain intervals to make our lab as accurate as possible?


- Certain intervals were omitted from this experiment in order to ensure

that we were providing the most accurate lab we could. Between some intervals, the

numbers for time and/or average velocity were so radically strange that to use them in

the lab would onl...