Purpose:

This lab is a Frakenstein of a some other labs to allow us to explore a little about projectile motion and friction in the world of COVID and remote learning.

Procedure:

In the lab we will be 'launching' rolled socks off a countertop. By measuring where socks hit the ground we can determine their horizontal speed at launch. From this we can then determine the coefficient of friction between the socks and the countertop. Newton's Laws AND kinematics - sweet! The details of your data entry and analysis will be in the SockLaunch notebook on the PH211 github.

1) Find a regular pair of crew or calf tube socks NOT lowcut just so we have a little more mass. Roll the sock into a compact and tidy ball. If you need guidance here is the official USAF sock rolling technique (who knew?). I don't need you to be all basic training about it but knock yourself out. Flatten your rolled socks so they are more dinner roll shaped that ball shaped. Your rolled socks will be your projectile. We are using socks so there is a low risk of damaging anything in your house.

2) Find a countertop somewhere that you can slide your projectile off the counter counter so it lands on the floor. Do a number quick tests until you can reliably get the projectile to land at about the same distance from the edge of the counter. This means the projectile is leaving the counter at a consistent velocity. Use coins or any other flat object to mark the location that your projectile lands on the floor. Be sure to determine typical minimum and maximum distances as well over 5 or so launches so we can assess the variability of your data. This data will be entered into your lab notebook and analyzed using the tools there.

3) Before heading off to your computer to do data entry and analysis take the same projectile and slide it along the counter where it does NOT fly off the edge. You should find that, not surprisingly, it comes to rest after some distance. Mark the locationi where you release the projectile and the location at which it comes to rest. If the speed at which you are sliding your projectile is consistent you should get a reasonably consistent set of data for this experiment as well.

 

4) Because this is a novel (as in 'novel corona virus') lab I have no clear sense of how long this lab will take so I am loathe to overdo it. In future years I might ask you to add some coins to the inside of your projectile to see if increasing the mass of the projectile changes the results for either part of the lab.

LAB DELIVERABLES:

See the Jupyter notebook for this lab for the deliverables.