Circular Motion Lab

Position ladybug at a distance of one meter from the center and set Angular Velocity to any value between 175deg/sec to 200deg/sec. Start the simulation. Do you see a pink arrow and a green arrow appear on the ladybug?

Yes

Which arrow represents acceleration and which arrow represents velocity?

Pink is acceleration, and Green is velocity.

Pause the simulation and position the ladybug 3.5m away from the center of the circular disc. Play the simulation at the same degrees/sec setting as before.

Do you observe any differences with your display vectors? What caused this?

The length of the pink/green arrow increased because the bug's distance increased.

Why are the two arrows, pink and green, at 90 to each other?

It is because it is going in a circular motion, thus not affecting the magnitude but changing the direction.

Given you know the Angular Velocity in units of degrees/sec, you can convert it to radians/sec. Using the distance from the center as shown on your ruler, calculate the tangential velocity of the ladybug.

Angular velocity(w) =175 deg/sec

Angular velocity (in rad/sec) =175x3.14/180 = 3.1rad/sec

Tangential velocity 3.5x3.1= 10.85 rad/sec

Determines the ladybug's radial acceleration.

Radial acceleration=3.5x3.1^2

Radial acceleration is 33.635rad/sec^2

Procedure 2.

Click on the Rotation tab.

Under Show Graphs click on q, w, v

Experiment with changing location of the ladybug and beetle on the wheel. Watch the angular velocity for both bugs.

How does position relative to the center of the wheel affect the angular velocity (w)?

It increases the radius.

Experiment with changing the location of the ladybug and beetle on the wheel. How does position relative to the center of the wheel affect the velocity?

It increases because the further it gets, the greater the velocity.

What other factors affect the velocity (v, the linear or tangential velocity) of the bugs?

The angular velocity/acceleration because when increasing the angular velocity, the previous bug's velocity increases as well at the same rate.

Under show graphs click on q, w, a

Hit Clear in the lower right corner. Set the angle value to 0 and the angular velocity value to 5 deg/s. It is best to set the Sim Speed slider to Slow. Click on the vertical axis scaler arrows until the angular velocity graph max is 50. Click on the vertical axis scaler arrows until the angular acceleration graph max is 10.

Hit the Go! button along the lower right row of buttons. After a few seconds, hit the scaler button on the angular velocity graph to set the max to 40. This usually brings the line up on that graph. At that point, without pausing the simulation, set the angular acceleration to 5 and hit "enter" on your keyboard.

Allow the simulation to run for a minute or so. Describe changes you observe in the ladybug's motion. Include what you see in the angle graph, the angular velocity graph, and the angular acceleration graph to support your observations.

Allow the simulation to continue running. Look at the information on the graphs. Do the values for angle, angular velocity, and angular acceleration make sense? Why or why not?

What does angular acceleration mean?

Angular acceleration is how quickly the angular velocity changes over time. Angular velocity measures how fast an object is rotating, while angular acceleration calculates the rate at which rotation speed increases or decreases.