An experiment to determine g – the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth’s surface

APPARATUS
1 bear, 1 tree, 1 trampoline, 1 TV camera and stopwatch

METHOD
We let the bear climb up into the tree and then we put the trampoline under the tree and then my friend Simon shot him with a tranquilizer dart and I filmed it for the telly.

RESULTS
Broadband conections/ppl at work: 2MB mpeg of Bouncing Bear News Item. Otherwise IMAGINE IT. Having studied the video footage I should have drawn a graph but I’d run out.

CONCLUSION
The coefficient of restitution between bear and trampoline is greater than that between bear and grass

R_bt > R_bg

I looked up g in a textbook. It’s 9 point something.

SENSATIONS WATCH

The reference to Thai Sweet Chilli

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DR Andrew Mackay

5 Oct 2006 12:10

Hi my name is Andy

I think your experiment is excellent but not completely correct.

If you repeat the experiment with a different bear , for example a polar bear you will find that your values are in-acccurate.

The actual value according to my results are that g = 9.8125569898721271 N/kg.

Yours sincerely
DR.Andrew Mackay

P.S If you require more information feel free to mail me on my supplied address.

admin

5 Oct 2006 13:33

now that’s a lot of significant figures!

accuracy to 10^-15 ms-2. Basing that on timing a bear falling out of a tree would require you to measure the distance fallen and time of fall immensely accurately. I also imagine that you would have to repeat the experiment several times and work out the error in your measurements – clearly quite low in this case. The error induced by air resistance would also need to be taken in to account at this accuracy.

So in summary, from your accurate figure i deduce that you have repeatedly dropped a bear on the ground in a vacuum.

wpDiscuz

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An experiment to determine g – the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth’s surface

SENSATIONS WATCH

The reference to Thai Sweet Chilli

Latest comments on FT