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Physics in Sledding

Physics in Sledding

In my backyard I have a small hill and every year when it snows my family enjoys sledding down this hill. Because it recently snowed, my sister and I decided to go sledding. While doing this, I decided that I could use LoggerPro to analyze a video of us sledding. I placed two yard sticks on the ground where my sister would sled past.


I uploaded this video to the software and was able to analyze the movement of the sled in different ways. When entering data in, I converted the 2 yards to 1.828800 meters. I then plotted the points and graphs were produced.



With the slope from the position vs. time graphs in x and y, I was able to find the velocity in the x and y directions. In the x direction the velocity is -1.855 m/s because the sled is moving down the hill to the left. In the y direction the velocity is 0.1477 m/s.

With the slope from the velocity vs. time graphs in x and y, I was able to find the acceleration in the x and y directions. In the x direction the sled decelerated by (-) 1.083 m/s/s because the sled was moving down the hill to the left. In the y direction the sled accelerated by 0.06382 m/s/s.

Comments

  1. Mr GrayJanuary 4, 2018 at 2:21 PM

    Does the fact that you're holding your phone at an angle to match that of the hill matter in your calculations??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJanuary 4, 2018 at 2:46 PM

      Yes, the fact that I'm holding the phone at an angle that matches that of the hill does matter in the calculations because it seems as though my sister is not moving at an angle. It looks more like she is moving horizontally, which changes the way that much of the information is calculated. For example, a free-body diagram of the video taken where the phone is tilted would be very different from a free-body diagram of a sledder going down a hill with the angle. The axes would stay vertical and horizontal in the former diagram but it the latter they would have to be tilted to match the angle of the sledder's acceleration. This tilt to the axes would introduce sine theta and cosine theta values that would change some of the answers.

      Delete

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