Suppose you have the following equipment available: an electronic balance as wel

Question

Suppose you have the following equipment available: an electronic balance as well as a motion detector and an electronic force sensor attached to a computer-based laboratory system. You would like to determine the mass of a block of ice that can slither smoothly along a very level table top without noticeable friction.

(a) Describe how you would use some of the equipment to find the gravitational mass of the ice.

(b) Describe how you would use some of the equipment to find the inertial mass of the ice.

(c) Based on the activities you completed in Section 5.9 in Unit 5, do you predict that the values for your two types of mass will be the same or different?

Explanation / Answer

A) We can measure gravitational mass of the ice block by placing it on the elecronic balance. It will measure the force exerted by the mass of the body due to gravity and then display the result as mass, which will be the gravitational mass.

B)To measure the intertial mass, we apply a contant force and measure it using the force sensor. Let us say that the reading by force sensor if F.

We also have motion sensor, which will give us the position of the ice block at different times. Using this data we find the value of acceleration, a.

Now if we divide the force by acceleration, that is F/a, we get the inertial mass.

C) The gravitational mass and the inertial mass will be same.

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