So today, the last group of students finished our experiments on Galileo. The question we explored was the Law of Falling Bodies (objects that are falling continuously accelerate and the distance traveled depends on the square of the time) and whether or not the acceleration of a falling object depends on mass. Some groups dropped objects, whereas others used ramps. Some used ultrasonic motion sensors by Vernier. Others made videos and used the Image Analysis software developed by Jessie Thorup, a recent graduate in mechanical engineering from Tufts. The one interesting hiccup with the software is that it would download the data into a Google Docs. But with the recent migration to Google Drive, she needs to update the software.
