Angular velocity, Spinning Beam

5cm 

10cm 

15cm 

1. Use the velocity components to determine the direction of the velocity vector. Is it in the expected direction? 

- The angular velocity we obtained from our video analysis is nearly constant, making them tangent to the circular path the bem travels. These values are in the expected direction for the linear velocity components of circular motion. 

 2. Analyze enough different points in the same video to make a graph of the speed of a point as a function of distance from the axis of rotation. What quantity does the slope of this graph represent? 

- For our video analysis, we analyzed 3 different points on the beam in the same video and fitted the curve to a cosine graph. We plotted the speed values we got against the radius (3 different points), and the slope of this graph corresponds to the angular velocity, which is constant for all radii. 

 3. Calculate the acceleration of each point and graph the acceleration as a function of the distance from the axis of rotation. What quantity does the slope of this graph represent?

- We calculated the centripetal acceleration for each of the 3 different radii using the formula: a=(v^2)/r. When we plotted the graph of acceleration-radius, we saw that the curve was quadratic which agrees with the formula: a=(w^2)r. These show that the slope of this graph shows (w^2).