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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2024-11-23 17:44 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2017 Meeting
Section: Physics Education
Title:
The study of free fall in a resistive medium using spreadsheets
Authors:
Ionel GRIGORE(1), Daniela STOICA(1), Cristina MIRON(2)
Affiliation:
(1)"Ion Luca Caragiale" National College, Ploieşti, Romania
(2) University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, P.O.Box MG-11, Magurele, 077125 Bucharest, Romania
E-mail
grigore_1965@yahoo.com
Keywords:
spreadsheets, Excel, free fall, terminal velocity, drag force, didactic tools, Physics Education
Abstract:
This paper describes a tool with interactive spreadsheets for the study of free fall in Earth’s constant gravitational field, taking into account air resistance. The body is considered to be of spherical shape and the drag force proportional to the square of the velocity. Depending on the input data, the final velocity and time of fall are calculated, and the height and velocity according to time are graphically rendered. The results show comparatively the motion of the body in air and in vacuum, highlighting the terminal velocity of fall into the air. The tool was designed to deliver the results both by an analytical approach and a numerical one. The analytical approach uses directly the solutions of the equation of motion for the free fall in the resistive medium. The numerical approach is based on an iterative process of generating the values of velocity and the coordinate in time, considering the shape of the equation of motion. With the help of a specific search function in the spreadsheet, the numeric values can be found for the ground velocity and the time of fall. This tool can help in the analysis of the difference between the free fall of a body into the air and the free fall of the same body in vacuum. Moreover, it can be tested, with a rapid feedback, under what conditions the motion in air can be approximated by the motion in vacuum. The tool also offers the opportunity to be used on different levels of learning. Thus, the numerical or analytical approach can be used depending on the level of knowledge at which students are at a given time, and it can illustrate that through both methods the same results are produced
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