Rotation Lab
1. Use the velocity components to determine the direction of the velocity vector. Is it in the expected direction? linear velocity: v = rw 4cm: v = 0.051 m/s 8cm: v = 0.102 m/s 12cm: v = 0.152 m/s The direction of the linear velocity is tangent to the circular path the beam takes which is expected. 2. Analyze enough different points in the same video to make a graph of the speed of a point as a function of distance from the axis of rotation. What quantity does the slope of this graph represent? For the fit, we utilized a cosine graph, and the average slope of the three radii was 1.27 rad/s, which reflects the angular velocity. We used the same video and allowed the beam to make two rotations to ensure that the angular velocity values were the same for all three radii. 3. Calculate the acceleration of each point and graph the acceleration as a function of the distance from the axis of rotation. What quantity does the slope of this graph represent? The acceleration increa...