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Measuring heights with a stopwatch

Your goal in this experiment is to determine the height of the first, second, and third floors above the atrium level in the College of Science building. However, you may not use metersticks; your only tool is a stopwatch.

  1. Put observers with stopwatches in place: some on the atrium level, some on first floor, some on second floor, some on third floor.

  2. From the atrium level, I will toss a ball up into the air. The ball will go up to just above the level of the third floor, then fall back down (that's the plan, at least).

  3. Observers on each level should lie down on the floor and keep a level, horizontal gaze. When the ball first passes your eyes (on its way up), start the timer. When the ball again passes your eyes (on the way down), stop the timer.

  4. All observers will record the interval, and we'll write down all the values back in the classroom.

Your job is to use this measurements of TIME to figure out the DISTANCE of each floor above the atrium level. You should also calculate the height of the ball at its peak, and its velocity when it strikes the floor.

Sorry, we could not find this page | RIT CIS - Center for Imaging Science

Sorry, we could not find this page

We apologize, but the page you were looking for is not available. Most of our material is available from the menus above.

Last Modified: 2:01pm 10 Aug 11


Adapted from Prof. Michael Richmond.