Bolter Beryl vs Steady Sam

Spreadsheets to analyse motion

ref: Page 157 of text

In this activity you will use data from the textbook example Bolter Beryl and Steady Sam to use a spreadsheet program to analyse data. Spreadsheets enable us to examine most facets of motion and it is important you can use them accurately.

Create a table using the data from table 5.1, p157 of the text...

Use the program to plot the data, make sure it is a scatter plot, and that the points are crosses. The axis needs to be correctly labelled and you should show major and minor grid lines:

Find the average velocity for Beryl and Sam. How well do these values represent their motion?

Use your spreadsheet to calculate the average velocity for each time interval of Beryl’s journey

Why was the midpoint calculated? What has happened to the number of points of data? How would this reflect on the reliability?

How could the data be improved?

Plot the velocity time data of Beryl’s race from table 5.3, p.96. Plot your average data on the same graph. How do they compare? Which method is more reliable? Why?

Can you create an average acceleration vs time from Beryl’s velocity data?