This past Wednesday and Thursday, junior STEM Physics students conducted their first lab for Unit 2 in the class: force.

Ms. Anastacia Babykin, first year teacher at McIntosh, taught her classes about the mechanics of pulleys and how to calculate tension, mass, direction and acceleration in a pulley system.Last week, students learned how to solve questions with a pulley attached to a horizontal surface and got to see their theoretical questions on paper done in real life in the Force Table Lab.

In the lab, students used a force table to see how, when forces acting on an object are balanced, the object is in static equilibrium. Three pulleys with one string connected to each were attached to a circular force table marked with 360 degrees. The circle was attached to a base.

In the lab, students were given a mass (in kg) that hung off on of the pulleys and had to calculate magnitude of force, direction, x component of force and y component of force for that pulley. They then used their results to calculate the same measurements for the other two pulleys in order to have a balanced system. They drew their results on a provided model and then tested the data.

The students attached whatever mass quantities they found to the ends of the pulleys; if they calculated everything correctly, the ring that connected the three strings in the middle would be dead center, showing a balance between the three forces.