To investigate the affect

Categories: Physics

Essay, Pages 3 (696 words)

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Any structure that overhangs e. g. a bride is known as a cantilever. There is a direct relationship between the applied force and deflection of a cantilever.

Aim:

To investigate the affect of changing the force applied to a cantilever on its deflection.

Equipment:

Meter stick - to act as a cantilever
Meter stick - to measure deflection
Retort stand to hold measuring meter stick
G clamp - to clamp cantilever to bench
100g masses - to provide the applied force (100g feels1. 0N)

Procedure:

Clamp the end of the meter stick to the bench.
Tie measuring meter tick to a retort stand such as a stool at the other end of the meter stick
Measure the current deflection and record as the deflection at 0.0N
Apply first 100g mass
Measure and record the change in deflection
Repeat the above for the next 5 100g masses

Variables:

In order to make this a fair test the following must be kept constant: Type an thickness of the ruler (e.

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g. thicker rulers will deflect less) Length of ruler (the greater the length is the greater the deflection).

Distance from clamped end the force is applied to ruler (the greater the deflection will be because the turning effect is greater Method of measuring the deflection (use the same line of sight/point on the ruler) If these are not kept constant the test will not be fair and the results gained will not be reliable.

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I am going to change:

Applied weight force (0-6 Newton's this will give 7 results which will be enough to identify any relationship)
Deflection (this is the vertical distance from the rest position the ruler moves).

In order to make this experiment safe a maximum of 6 Newton's may be used otherwise the ruler is liable to snap.

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So that my results are accurate: Weight force: Assume that each 100g mass is accurate and provides 1 Newton of force.

Deflection: Measure to the nearest mm as this is a closer division it provides more accurate results and the meter stick can allow this. In order to gain reliable results the experiment must be repeated another two times and an average found. If only the first set of results is used you have nothing to compare it to and you have no way of finding out if the results are accurate and reliable.

Prediction: I predict that the deflection will increase with increasing turning effect on the ruler; the turning effect depends on the length of the ruler and the applied force and since the length is kept constant the deflection will increase with force. The topside of the ruler is being stretched and the bottom is being compressed. This relates to Hookes law in that the deflection is directly proportional to the load forces. This means that if the force is doubled so too will the deflection. In order to prove this a straight line graph should be produced from the results obtained.

As the molecules in solid wood act like springs the meter stick should therefore obey Hookes law and act as a cantilever.

Conclusion:

There is a straight line, which has been drawn through the points on the graph; this therefore means that there is in fact a direct relationship between applied force and deflection of the cantilever. Hookes law and its formula is obeyed up to an elastic limit which we did not reach as we predicted that at a weight force of anything over 6 Newton's which is liable to break the elastic limit.

Evaluation:

We took all the appropriate steps in order to make sure that our procedure was reliable. In this particular investigation we obtained no anomalous results as all the results formed a pattern. I feel that we repeated this experiment enough times to produce a clear straight-line graph and make a firm conclusion, which linked in with my prediction. We were able to tell that our results were reliable as they were all close to the line of best fit. The closer the results are to the line of best fit the more reliable they are, the further away from the line they are the more unreliable the results are.