Angular Acceleration and Radius

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Homework Help Overview

The discussion revolves around an experiment involving a rotary motion sensor and different sized disks to measure angular acceleration. The original poster expresses confusion regarding the relationship between angular acceleration and the radius of the disks, noting that their results indicate an increasing angular acceleration with larger disks, contrary to their expectations of an inverse relationship.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Assumption checking

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • The original poster questions the validity of their graph results and considers whether the torque provided by the string could influence the angular acceleration. They also inquire about the constancy of tangential acceleration across different disk sizes.

Discussion Status

Participants are exploring the implications of the mass of the weight relative to the disks, with one participant suggesting that the weight's mass may be significantly larger than that of the disks. There is an ongoing inquiry into the mass of the weight used in the experiment.

Contextual Notes

The original poster mentions using a paperclip as the weight, prompting further questions about its mass in relation to the disks.

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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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