Excel Exercises
Excel Exercises
Begin by downloading the full version of Microsoft Excel on to your computer. As a McMaster University student you have access to this and do not need to purchase it. Note: online versions of Excel or other software may not have the full functionality that you will need for labs in this course and Physics 1CC3.
Next, watch the short Excel Tutorial in the Appendix for an overview of some Excel features that you may find useful in this course.
Now you’re ready to begin the actual Excel Exercises for this lab. The instructions here are specifically for Excel. If you are working with Numbers, there will be similar operations. You can probably find them by right-clicking randomly, but if not, Google is helpful…
You will hand in your work for these Excel Exercises on Crowdmark to receive feedback. The due date is posted in the Crowdmark assignment.
Exercise 1
a) Plot the function:
(1)
from t = 0 to t = 7 s in time steps of 0.1 s.
If you aren’t sure what to do, try these steps:
i. Autofill the times 0, 0.1, 0.2…. in column A, cells 2 to 72. (It’s often useful to put the title of the column in cell 1)
ii. In cell B2, type an equal sign (to tell Excel that you are about to give it an equation) and then type the equation which describes x(t) using cell A2 as t. When you are done, it should look like this…
=A2^2‑7*A2+12
iii. Autofill the rest of column B to row 72.
iv. Highlight all of the data in column A and column B. Click on the Insert menu on the toolbar and choose the Scatter Plot chart option.
b) While you have a graph to play with, try out these features:
- Expand the graph so that it’s easily visible. (Let the mouse hover over the corner of the graph until you get the diagonal cursor and drag.)
- Click on the graph to bring up the Chart Tools menu. Choose Add Chart Element.
- Add a title to your graph and titles for the x and t axes.
- Add horizontal and vertical gridlines.
- Right-click on any of the data points and choose Format Data Series. There are a number of formatting options available. Try, for example, to change the default marker shape and size. (Click on the Fill & Line icon, choose Marker and then Marker Options. Switch from Automatic to Built-in to make your selection.) Close the Format menu.
- Move your cursor to somewhere inside the chart area (but outside the grid lines, perhaps near the chart title). Right click to bring up the Chart Options menu. Choose the Move Chart option to move the graph to a new worksheet. Make sure that you have selected the full “Chart Area” in order to get the correct menu to show up. Hint: right-clicking beside the Chart Title usually works well. The page tabs on the bottom left of your workbook should now show a Chart1 page. Rename the tab My Graph. (Right click on the tab and choose the rename option.)
c) How would you describe the function?
Exercise 2
Return to Sheet1.
a) Suppose that we are only interested in the time interval around t = 5.0 s. Make a new plot showing only the points between 4.5 and 5.5 s in steps of 0.1 s.
b) The default in Excel is to show the point where the axes cross (i.e. (0,0)), but unless the origin is of interest to you, you will want to reset the x and t scales on the graph so that your data roughly fills the plot area. Right-click on the horizontal axis (or on one of the values near the horizontal axis) and you should open an options menu. Choose Format Axis. Change the minimum value to 4.0. (The lowest point on the axis will now begin at 4.0 instead of zero.) Reset your vertical axis as well.
c) How would you describe the function now?
Exercise 3
a) Suppose you want to look even more carefully around t = 5.00 s. Make a new table and plot of data points between 4.95 s and 5.05 s in steps of 0.01 s. (Notice that we have reduced the step by a factor of 10. You will need to reset the axes again.)
b) How would you describe the graph now?
c) Right-click on any data point to open the options menu, and choose Add trendline. Choose the linear option and ask it to Display Equation on chart. What slope does it give you?
d) Take the derivative of equation (1) in part 1(a) and evaluate it at t = 5.00 s. Comment.
Exercise 4
a) Suppose you want to look more carefully around t = 1.00 s this time. What do you expect the slope of the line to be?
b) Make a new table and plot of data points between 0.95 s and 1.05 s in steps of 0.01 s. Add a trendline to this graph. What is the slope? Comment.