A Ball Rolling Down An Inclined Plane

The figure shows an example of a cart moving down a ramp.

A ball rolling down an inclined plane.

The inclined plane is 2 meters long and is adjustable up to 20 w r t. The block can only accelerate in the direction along the plane. A bowling ball and billiard ball race ends in a tie for example. Suppose that i have some frictionless block on an inclined plane.

For many years the effects of mass on objects rolling down an inclined plane have been studied and well known. You can use the formula with. He devised an experiment involving balls rolling down an inclined plane to test this theory. There is a ball rolling down an incline with no slipping.

It consisted of a wooden ramp with a groove cut into it and a bronze ball. It is wide enough 0 4 m to race objects side by side down the hill. Generally having a greater mass means that a rolling object such as a ball will have a greater moment of inertia. In physics you can calculate the velocity of an object as it moves along an inclined plane as long as you know the object s initial velocity displacement and acceleration.

If we consider the point of contact between the ball and the inclined plane to be the pivot point for our torque calculations then i have noticed that friction is no longer in play and gravity and normal force is the reason for the torque. Galileo s experimental apparatus was simple. Using a water clock galileo measured the time it took for the ball to roll a known distance down the inclined plane. Just plug this information into the following equation.

After many trials he observed that the amount of time it took for the ball to roll down the entire length of the ramp was equal to double the amount of time it took for the same ball to only roll a quarter of the distance.