Compare The Three Angles Of Incline And The Acceleration Of A Trolley Cart Down An Inclined Plane

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The aim of this experiment was to determine the correlation between the three angles of incline and the acceleration of a trolley cart down an inclined plane. The first hypothesis predicted that as the angle of incline increased, the rate of acceleration of the trolley cart would also increase down the inclined plane. This was supported by the results in the experiment. The angle of 8.91⁰ had a theoretical acceleration of 1.52m s-2 and its highest velocity was 1.55m/s and the smaller angle of 3.84⁰ only had a theoretical acceleration of 0.66m s-2 and its highest velocity was 0.45 m/s. According to Newton’s second law, the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting upon it, using the formula F = m x a. In this experiment, the force acting upon the cart was gravitational force. …show more content…

The second hypothesis proposed that the greater the mass of the trolley cart, the larger the acceleration of the cart down the inclined plane. This was also supported by the data, the highest velocity of the lighter mass was 0.45 m/s and had an experimental acceleration of 0.35 m s-2 and the largest velocity of the heavier mass was 0.54 m/s with an experimental acceleration of 0.38 m s-2. Increasing the mass of an object only increases the force an object has; it has no effect on the acceleration of the object. The cart with the greater mass will have more gravitational potential energy on the inclined plane and there will be a stronger gravitational pull upon it, which will lead to more kinetic energy when the trolley is travelling down the inclined plane and so it will have a greater

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