Force Table Lab Partners: Person 1, Person 2, Person 3, etc. Instructor, T.A.: Your Instructor, Your TA MM/DD/YY ABSTRACT This experiment was conducted to show how vectors affect one another- in particular, how opposing vectors can be added up to cancel each other out to create a system in equilibrium, which was done by hanging different masses over various angles on a force table. As a result, each case showed that when summed all forces added to 0. INTRODUCTION Vectors are extremely important in physics, as they provide a way to show quantity that has not only a magnitude, but a direction as well, which is extremely important when explaining things like motion. Although these vectors are more complex than just a single number, they can be manipulated by other vectors fairly easily. This makes combining certain measurements that could involve a multitude of vectors, as well as manipulating a single vector as it can be added or subtracted from itself, fairly simple. This experiment showed the use of a force table to prove this manipulability with vectors by setting mass as forces on certain angles in order to cancel each other out. This works as an example because all three of the masses had some sort of force, in this case being caused by acceleration due to gravity, being applied to them in the direction they were angled. It also helped to demonstrate graphical methods for manipulating vectors by means of “tip-to-tail” measurement. This type of measurement aids in the visual representation of vectors and gives understanding to how a system of vectors looks when in equilibrium, in this case a quadrilateral formed by four vectors of different magnitude and direction. A number of equations were used in this experiment, and are as follows: Instructor name. Fx = 0Σ (1) Fy = 0Σ (2) Fx = Fcos( )θ (3) Fy = Fsin( )θ (4) g = 9.8 m/s2 (5) F = mg (6) Equations (1) and (2) show how F x and F y , the horizontal and vertical components of force F (Newtons ), when in an equilibrium-system should sum to 0. Equations (3) and (4) show how the force F is geometrically related to the horizontal and vertical components, respectively, by means of angle (degrees ). Equation (5) is a constant that states how the acceleration due toθ gravity, g (meters/second 2 ), is equal to 9.81. Equation (6) is a variation of Newton’s Second Law that shows that the force due to gravity on an object is equivalent to g multiplied by mass m (kilograms ). PROCEDURE The force table, which allows a central equilibrium to be reached by hanging multiple masses at different angles, was set up with 3 points to be determined. The force table with a 3-pulley setup is seen in Figure 1. The pulleys were attached around the circumference with a ring and three strings that could spin freely placed in the center of the table. The first trial includ ...