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Measuring the Acceleration of a Freely Falling
Picket Fence (Photogate)
Exp. 2


Purpose:
To measure the acceleration due to gravity by measuring the tine of fall of a picket fence dropped through a photogate.

Introduction:
You drop a picket fence, a clear stripe with black bands, through a photogate. The photogate beam is blocked by band and the time between bands becomes increasingly shorter. The computer program, Science Workshop, calculates the average speed between bands. A graph of average speeds versus time gives the acieration due to gravity.

Data:
The slope of the velocity versus time, from the graph was 9.75 m/s2. The acceleration mean, from the table display, is also 9.75m/s...