Simple Experiment for Investigated rolling motion
Arpapong Changjan, Faculty of science and technology, Pathumwan Institute of Technology (Thailand)
Chatupol Kongsorn, Faculty of Science and Technology, Pathumwan Institute of Technology (Thailand)
Abstract
Rolling motion is a motion that is a combination of rotational and translational motion together, such as wheels motion. This motion is one of the classical mechanics topic of fundamental physics that the students have difficulties to comprehend. Because to describe rolling motion behavior, students must consider linear and rotation equation of motion simultaneously. When an object experiences pure translational motion, all of its points move with the same velocity as the center of mass; that is in the same direction and with the same speed and when an object experiences pure rotational motion about its center of mass, all of its points move at right angles to the radius in a plane perpendicular to the axis of rotation with a speed proportional to the distance from the axis of rotation. So that, when object experiences rolling motion the equation of motion let complicate more than pure motion. In this paper, we designed the simple experiment to investigate the rolling motion without slipping of a solid sphere down a homemade inclined plane and use non calculus mathematics to consider the acceleration due to gravity (g) from experimental data.