Range vs Height
Equipment: Marble or Steel Ball
½ & 1 Meter-stick
Card-stock paper
Masking Tape
Lab-Jack.
Objectives: measure range of a projectile and compare to launch energy to
determine whether there is a proportional relationship.
Procedure:
1) Raise the Jack to about 17cm. Tape your card-stock to the top of the LabJack and your table so that it forms a curved ramp.
2) Get out a piece of scratch paper to record range values. Practice releasing
the ball on the ramp when it is 2cm above the table. Measure the Range of
the ball until you get a consistent value. Record this value in Table 1.
3) Now measure the range of the ball for the remaining release heights shown
in Table 1.
4) Make a graph of Range (vertical) vs Release height (horizontal).
Table 1:
Release height
above table (cm)
Range (cm)
2cm
4cm
8cm
16cm
Summing Up
1. The Range of the ball vs release height is best described as:
__ Above proportional
__ Proportional
__ Below Proportional
2. If the ball is released from four times higher height, the Range of the ball s
__ is increased by about 50%
__ is increased by about a factor of 2
__ is increased by about a factor of 4