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The Physics Teacher -- February 2007 -- Volume 45, Issue 2, pp. 85
Playground Physics: Determining the Moment of Inertia of a Merry-Go-Round
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Add to FacebookA playground can provide a valuable physics education laboratory. For example, Taylor et al.1 describe bringing teachers in a workshop to a playground to examine the physics of a seesaw and slide, and briefly suggest experiments involving a merry-go-round. In this paper, we describe an experiment performed by students from a Society of Physics Students organization and their faculty advisor on a merry-go-round at a local park. The goal of the activity was for everyone to gain a greater understanding of the concepts of angular velocity, centripetal acceleration, moment of inertia, and conservation of angular momentum through their own personal experience—and to have fun, too.
© 2007 American Association of Physics Teachers
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History
Online Jan 2007
ARTICLE DATA
Digital Object Identifier
- Richard Taylor, David Hutson, Wesley Krawiec, Jhone Ebert, and Robin Rubinstein, “Computer physics on the playground,” Phys. Teach. 33, 332–337 (Sept. 1995PHTEAH000033000006000332000001).
- Part of the iLife suite on the Macintosh by Apple computer (http://www.apple.com).
- The uncertainty is calculated according to standard procedures for propagating random errors in a calculation, as described in depth by J.R. Taylor, An Introduction to Error Analysis (University Science Books, Herndon, VA,1982), pp. 56–57.
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