Free fall Experiment with a chronometer

Topics covered:

- Uniformly accelerated rectilinear motion

- Newton's second law

- Earth's gravitational field

- Determination of the Earth's acceleration

Principles and objectives:

Free fall is defined as the motion of a body subject only to gravity.

Applying Newton's second law with initial velocity and position being zero gives:

z(t) = ½ gt2 (1) and gi = 2 zi / t2i (2)

The fall duration ti is measured at different heights zi. gi is then calculated

for each pair (zi, ti) using equation (2). The value of g is thus determined

by averaging the calculated values.

- 1 Free Fall Device (ref 332127) - 1 Chronometer (ref 351058) - 1 Power Supply Block 12V (ref 281612)