The reason that the carts go around the same speeds regardless of the mass is due to Newton’s second law. The law says that all objects will have the same acceleration due to downward gravity acting upon the object, no matter the mass of the object. As the cart is going down the hill or up it, gravity is acting on it and acceleration remains the same for different masses. Obtaining the velocity, for each trial in part one, from Newton’s law would be hard because we do not know the exact degree of the force being applied to the carts. In order to derive the acceleration from Newton’s second law, we would have to have the mass of the cart and the force acting on the object. We would have to find the force first before we can apply Newton’s second law in order to find the acceleration of the cart. The results from part two show that the mass slightly affects the kinetic energy, and more drastically affects the gravitational potential energy. This is observed because the gravitational energy of an object depends on its mass and its height. The velocity and the mass affect the amount of kinetic energy the cart has, so when the mass of the cart changes and the velocity changes, this can account for a change in
The reason that the carts go around the same speeds regardless of the mass is due to Newton’s second law. The law says that all objects will have the same acceleration due to downward gravity acting upon the object, no matter the mass of the object. As the cart is going down the hill or up it, gravity is acting on it and acceleration remains the same for different masses. Obtaining the velocity, for each trial in part one, from Newton’s law would be hard because we do not know the exact degree of the force being applied to the carts. In order to derive the acceleration from Newton’s second law, we would have to have the mass of the cart and the force acting on the object. We would have to find the force first before we can apply Newton’s second law in order to find the acceleration of the cart. The results from part two show that the mass slightly affects the kinetic energy, and more drastically affects the gravitational potential energy. This is observed because the gravitational energy of an object depends on its mass and its height. The velocity and the mass affect the amount of kinetic energy the cart has, so when the mass of the cart changes and the velocity changes, this can account for a change in