THEORY

In the seventeenth century Galileo performed experiments which disproved the Aristotelian concept of motion of falling bodies. Specifically, Galileo challenged the premise established by Aristotle that a heavy object falls faster and reaches the ground earlier than a light object. Legend says that Galileo disproved this concept by dropping two spheres of different weights simultaneously from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and observed that they reached the earth at the same time. While historians question the validity of this account, Galileo did perform a similar experiment for objects rolling down an inclined plane and extended the results to freely falling bodies.

Galileo was interested in more than disproving one specific result of the Aristotelian worldview; he was seeking a completely new description of motion.  Design an experiment to study uniformly accelerated motion on an inclined plane.

Purpose

To study uniformly accelerated motion on an inclined plane.

Available materials

 Ask instructor for available materials.