Graphing Your Motion Lab Activity

Today in class the instructor gave us a brief explanation about how to use the Lab Quests, which caused my group to be less confused today during our activity. We set our motion detector which was connected to the Lab Quest on a chair and marked off a 4m straight line on the floor directly in front of the motion detector. During the first trial I stood at the 1m mark and slowly walked backwards holding a clipboard (for the motion detector to have a flat surface to detect), and walked slowly backwards towards the 4m mark; then again walking faster. We then looked at the graphs that we made and drew them on our paper. The graphs showed that when we walked slowly backwards (negative motion) the graphing line moved down then up with smoother lines, when we walked faster in the negative motion the lines were much more jagged and closer together than before. When walking forward (positive motion) the graphing line went up then down. We graphed our data on position vs. time graph and a velocity vs. time graph. This was an interesting activity, and I realized today that much more explanation would need to be given to younger students because it was a little confusing learning how to use the equipment and understanding what the data meant.