Unit 6: Continued

Today, we expanded more on unit 6. We used an air track in our lab today to help us understand more about the relationship between mass and acceleration. The effect of a pulley is shown in this lab. Pulleys change the direction of a force. We used one on a frictionless surface so we could see the effect of acceleration onto a pulley. By changing the weights of the track weight and the end weight, we were able to graph the differences in acceleration. We noticed that acceleration is inversely proportional to mass, because as mass increases, acceleration decreases. This makes sense because it takes more force to push an object with more mass than an object with less mass. We also learned that acceleration is proportional to force. The more force (in the forward direction) you put on something, the faster it goes.