Relationship Between Mass and Period and an Inertial Balance

Physics Lab 

Statement: The purpose of the lab is find the mass of an object by using an inertial balance.

Introduction: Students will try to find an unknown mass by using inertial pendulum. Students will measure the different oscillation periods with know masses and then measure the unknown mass. 

Procedure: Students will use inertial pendulum which is shown on the right. Students will collect data from the pendulum by using logger pro. The data that is being collect is the period of oscillation of the pendulum. Students will place weight at the end of pendulum this will cost the period of oscillation to increase as more weight is added. 

Data:

This data shows the mass at 280 grams.

This shows the weight at 300 grams.


This data table has the maximum value for the weight on the pendulum of 320 grams.

The data calculations


Summary of the day is we measure the oscillation of the inertial balance with different weights.We recorded the data and plot a graph to determined the mass of the tray as it was unknown. We guess a mass that would produce a correlation close to .9999 to make sure we were close to the mass of the tray.