Introduction: Energy
Energy – in a physics sense – is one of the most useful concepts you’ll come across.
Energy is a quantity that describes the capacity of something to ‘do work’ and can be divided into ‘kinetic’ and ‘potential’. Kinetic energy is related to movement and potential energy is related to the ‘potential’ of an object to have movement. However, these two types of energy can come in many forms, and can be converted back and forth between types. In this lab, you will be exploring how potential energy can be converted into kinetic energy, and how total energy in a system can be ‘lost’.
In Exercise 1, you will describe how gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy mathematically. You will consider how parameters like speed, height, and mass relate to kinetic and potential energy. This will help you make predictions about the experiments that follow.
In Exercise 2, you will perform your experiment, where you will drop a ball and record the time between bounces.
In Exercise 3, you will analyze the data collected in Exercise 2 using a graph. You will observe how energy is converted between potential and kinetic and observe the loss of energy between bounces.
In Exercise 4, you will calculate your system’s coefficient of restitution (don’t worry, this is a new term, we will explain it!).
Learning Objectives
Set yourself the following learning outcomes for this lab:
By the end of this lab, I will
- Identify the mechanism of how gravitational potential energy can be converted to kinetic energy and vice versa.
- Write mathematical expressions to describe the conversion of energy in a system.
- Create and use an audio track to determine the time between bounces and relate this to energy conservation.
- Calculate the coefficient of restitution for a collision.
But before any of that, you’ll want to get yourself warmed up!
