Bugaboo Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering Adamson University, Eremite, Manila In this experiment, the students will determine the resultant of different forces using different methods: graphical method; and getting the equilibrate of forces using component method the force table.
Each of the three methods has their own way of getting the resultant force but as the experiment progresses, it was observed that the exultant vectors obtained through these methods are merely accurate and values are closely the same to each other. 1. ) Introduction Vector quantities are quantities that deal with magnitude and direction such as force. Vectors are used to determine a resulting direction and magnitude by getting the sum of given vectors. The sum of vectors is called the resultant vector. Graphical method uses a certain scale to determine the equivalent vector based on the drawing.
It is a simple and direct way of getting the resultant force but is limited in precision. Component method can obtain the resultant force by getting two directions at right angles to each other and getting their summations using the Pythagorean Theorem. In getting the equilibrate of the given forces, a force table can be used (see Fig. 1. 1). The equilibrate of a set of forces is the single force that must be obtained with the set of forces to maintain in the system in equilibrium. Figure 1. 1 (Force table) These are the objectives of the experiment that is provided for vectors: a. To study vectors and graphical methods for determining the resultant of several forces. . ) To determine the resultant and equilibrate of two and three given forces using the component method. C. ) To determine the equilibrate of the given forces using the force table. 2. ) Theory Application of the component method: R – resultant force Fix – horizontal component FYI – vertical component Computation for % error: Sits. Value – Expel. Value % error = 3. ) Methodology x 100% SST. Value The apparatus needed to accomplish the experiment are force table, weight holders, set of masses, sheets of graphical paper, ruler, pencil and protractor.
As observed in the table of experiment results (see Table 4. 2), the resultant force and the equilibrate recorded from the graphical method and in the component method are very similar to each other. This proves that the graphical method can accurately give the close results as to the component method if the process of graphing is proper and correct. As for the comparison of data recorded by the force table and the component method, the results are very close to each other, but not exact. This is because the mass that is converted from the vectors are not exact r equal to the mass applied to the force table.
Points of values were disregarded because the set of masses used has limited number of masses only. 5. ) Summary The three methods of determining the resultant force and the equilibrate of variety of given forces are all accurate. However, there is a very little change in the results depending on what method is used. The component method is used as the standard result because it was accurately computed. As observed on the data results between the graphical method and the component method, there was no error obtained.
Chances are that errors will be obtained but except if there will be uncertainties on the measurement used that can affect the conversion of forces. As for the results between the force table and the component method, there was a small error obtained. The set of masses that were applied to the force table was not the very exact as of the results of the conversions of dyne’s to grams and that made a small impact on the resultant and equilibrate. Hence, the three methods of used in the experiment were proven correct and accurate. References: Dad College of Sciences Physics Dept. “College Physics 1”
