Nelson Cole - Highlight Videos & Athlete Profile - Hudl

Nelson Cole - Highlight Videos & Athlete Profile - Hudl

Galileo's Vision

Hello Physicist today we will try and prove Galileo's theory that distance is directly proportional to time squared by using a ball in linear motion on an inclined plane. But first a little background on Galileo.

Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician during the scientific revolution. In 1590 Galileo began the search for a unified theory of matter. He began this quest arguing the weight of an object determined its amount of motion. But this only left him with the question of what is weight. Galileo struggled with uncovering this concept of heavy versus light and a way to bring all matter under one proportional measuring scale. Galileo recognized acceleration and begin to do experiments on inclined planes to determine the effects acceleration had on matter. He began to really recognize that acceleration had a great effect on matter and in this time period Galileo’s law of free fall arises. Galileo determined using inclined planes that distance is directly proportional to time squared.

 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/#3

Linear motion is the motion of an object that is continuously changing its position relative to a resting point as determined by a person or detection device.

http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/motion.htm

The materials used by my group was an iphone watch, ruler, inclined plane, and a ball.

Hypothesis: Increasing the height of an object will accelerate its free fall exponentially.

Procedure: Using a ball and inclined plane, we measured the amount of time it took the ball to roll of the inclined plane from different distances. After three trials at one distance we would let it roll from a greater distance.

Conclusion: In a uniformly accelerated object, distance is directly proportional to time squared.