Velocity Lab Investigation

We used two different types of balls in the lab. We used a golf ball and a ping pong ball. We had a meter stick and a motion sensor. Our goal was to find the velocity of the two balls at three different heights. The heights were 1 meter, 2 meters, and 3 meters. We also had to use a stopwatch to determine the time it took for the ball to hit the ground after it had been dropped at one of the three heights. We used a formula that was d=vxt(distance= velocity times time) We used that to determine an average velocity for each height. We first dropped the golf ball from the three heights. The time it took for the ball to hit the ground was .53, .70, .53 seconds at 1m. When we dropped the ball at 2m it took .78, .63, .77 seconds for the ball to reach the ground. When we dropped it at 3m it took .99, .67, .99 seconds to reach the ground and bounce up. Here is the table for the golf ball.

1 meter	2 meter	3 meter	Average Velocity
0.53	0.78	0.99	1.69
0.7	0.63	0.67	2.98
0.53	0.77	0.99	3.89

After those tests were done we recorded down the date and started to test theping pong ball. At 1m the times were .42, .49, .52 seconds to hit the ground. At 2m the ping pong ball took .81, .91, .89 to reach the ground. At 3m the ball took 1.22, .85, 1.02 seconds to fall and bounce off the ground. After all the tests were done we took an average for all three heights for the different balls. The average velocity for the golf ball at 1m was 1.69 seconds. At 2m the golf ball had an average of 2.98 seconds. The average for 3m was 3.89 seconds. The average velocity for the ping pong ball at 1m was 2.08 seconds. For 2m the average was 2.06 seconds. And at 3m the average velocity was 3.62 seconds. Here is the table for the ping pong ball. The graph below the table is the third drop with the motion sensor. Our group did not have enough time to test both balls with the motion sensor. Only the ping pong ball was tested.

1 meter	2 meter	3 meter	Average Velocity
0.42	0.81	1.22	2.08
0.49	0.91	0.85	2.06
0.52	0.89	1.02	3.62