TITLE: How Does the Rate of Descent Change Due to Gravity?

AUTHOR: Nathan U. Blecharczyk

SCHOOL: Boston Latin Academy

SCHOOL ADDRESS: 205 Townsend Street, Boston, MA 02121

 

 

 

In my experiment my objective was to (a) derive the speed of falling objects of different weights and similar size by observing their incremental change in distance during precise time intervals and to (b) calculate their acceleration from the change in speed during these time intervals.

I did two trials for each of the three similarly shaped objects that I used. The first object (102 grams) had average accelerations of 9.49 and 8.54 m/sec/sec. The second object had acceleration values of 12.64 and 8.56 m/sec/sec. The third object had values of 9.4 and 10.7 m/sec/sec. Since I found that these values were very similar compared to the differences in weight and because the values did not seem to relate to the weight, I decided to average all of the values for a final value for acceleration that can be applied to all objects. This value is 9.89 m/sec/sec.

I concluded that when air resistance is acting equally (as on objects of similar size and profile) all objects accelerate at the same rate. I measured this rate of acceleration to be 9.89 m/sec/sec. This compares favorably to the rate of 9.80 m/sec/sec that is recognized by the scientific community.

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