Angular Acceleration and Radius

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The discussion centers on an experiment measuring angular acceleration using a rotary motion sensor with varying disk sizes. The results indicate that angular acceleration increases with larger disks, which contradicts the expected inverse relationship with radius. Participants question whether the string's torque increases with disk size and how this affects tangential acceleration, suggesting it may vary based on the mass of the disk compared to the weight. The mass of the weight, represented by a paperclip, is also scrutinized in relation to the disks' mass. Overall, there is confusion regarding the graph results and the underlying physics principles.
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I am writing a lab report for an experiment where we used a rotary motion sensor with different sized disks to find angular acceleration as a string attached to a falling weight unraveled and accelerated the disk. I am having confusion with my graph results and am wondering if they are correct or something is wrong.

The angular acceleration I find is increasing as the size of the spinning disk increases. From everything I have at my disposal I believe there is an inverse relationship between angular acceleration and the radius of the disk, so as the disk gets bigger the angular acceleration should decrease. Could the string be providing a lot more torque as the disk gets larger? Would you expect the tangential acceleration of the different disks to be constant, or changing as well?
 
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It would depend on the relative mass of the disk and the weight. From the results it would appear that the weight's mass is much larger than the disk's.
 
Last edited:
The weight on the end of the string was a paperclip /:
 
Must have been a good size paper clip. What was the mass of the paper clip compared to the mass of the disks?
 

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