On Oct. 18 and 21, AP Physics performed a lab about centripetal force, the force on an object going in a circle that keeps its path in a circle. The project aims to help students understand the process of finding the centripetal force, mass and velocity of an object in circular motion.

“We learned about centripetal forces,” junior Atharva Srivastava said. “We had a stick and a string attached to the stick, and we basically hold the string [with the] rubber stopper at the end of it and swing it around. Then you change the mass of the weight attached to the swing to see how the change of mass impacts the speed of the spinning around.”

After they collected the data for how long ten rotations took with different masses attached to the bottom, students would solve for how long one rotation would take and the centripetal force.

“In the centripetal force exploring a uniform circular motion lab they will verify the relationship between centripetal force, mass and velocity in an object in a uniform circular motion,” physics teacher Akshara Sudhakaran said. “They will be able to understand that the force of gravity acting on the object is equal to the centripetal force generated.”