Lab Partners: Lynel Ornedo, Nina Song, and Joel Cook
Purpose:
Determine an equation for the magnetic potential energy with a magnet in conjunction
with a slider on an air track.
Setup:
In this experiment we use an air track
attached to a reverse vacuum which will create an air flow and make the metal slider
on the track able to travel without friction. This equipment will reduce error.
A strong magnet is attached to the slider and another strong magnet will be attached
to the end of the track.
Procedure:
When we move the metal slider to the end,
the slider will bounce back due to the magnetic force. So if we level the air
track at different angle we can get a table which includes angle, force and
radian.
As we all known, the integration for a force
equals to energy. In this lab, the integration of F is the magnetic potential energy.
To verify this equation, we need to use a
motion sensor. Attach this motion sensor to the end of the magnetic side.
Because of the distance between motion detector and the magnet as plotted
below, we need to derive the new distance.
So first we need to level the track again
and make sure that it is horizontal, which means the cart will not move unless
we give it a push. Then we give the cart a push and record on logger pro. We
can derive the plot of position verse time. With it we can derive the speed and
then the kinetic energy. Use logger pro we can derive the various energies
verse position and time as plotted below.
Conclusion:
We can find that the total energy for the
whole system is almost a constant about 0.009J. There may be some error caused
by fail to level the track or very small friction, which make the total energy
look like a wave. Another reason is that we chose a quiet large value for the
distance between points in the plot, which is also a reason for the oscillation
of the total energy.
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