Mobile Science vs CloudLabs Linear Motion

by Ray Wisman and Kyle Forinash, Indiana University SE. Acknowledgements: Tab bar icons by Joseph Wain @ glyphish.com. Core-Plot used for plotting, http://code.google.com/p/core-plot. Acceleration records, graphs and emails the iPod/iPhone/iPad accelerometer measurements. The application is useful for measuring acceleration, velocity and distance resulting from motion along a single axis. Up to 120K unfiltered measurements can be recorded from 1 to 100 samples per second and graphed while recorded. Start to start recording measurements. Stop to stop recording. Send to send the recorded measurements as an email. Samples/second rate set using the slider bar. Calibrate to toggle zeroing of X, Y and Z axis values to ignore any effects due to gravity or other global acceleration of the device. With calibration ON, the initial one second of measurements are used to determine the average measure for each axis; for zeroing, the average is subtracted from each subsequent measure. X, Y and Z buttons display the graph of the acceleration, velocity and distance measurements for that axis. X, Y and Z axis values are displayed in real time by three progress bars and graphed. Time slider scrolls through the X, Y and Z axis values measured at the time selected.

In this simulator it is possible to study uniform rectilinear motion. For the development of this practice, the student has an air rail with a mobile, an air pump to eliminate friction, sensors to detect movement and a screen that shows the instantaneous measurements of the movement. It is necessary to configure the air rail to be able to travel a certain distance in a certain time.