Torque Lab Conclusion

Torques and its Magical Properties

            This lab was a fairly simple lab with an awesome lesson. We were able to see and measure the forces that produce torque, calculate the torque on a rotating body, and with that we were able to see what relationship torque holds with the lever arm. We had to start off with the system in equilibrium which meant that the net forces had to add up to zero as well as the torque. These can be formalized by saying   and  . This was a simple lab with only a few easy formulas. To find the torque after the weight had been added onto the string, we multiplied the force we had found on the scale by how far away the weight was from the scale. We did this on both sides to calculate the clockwise and counterclockwise torques. Our official formula is T=Fxl . We knew that our meter stick had to stay horizontal because if it had tilted at an angle we would’ve had to use the sin or cos of the angle it tilted at to find the force and that would’ve been too much work for something as easily fixable as leveling out our stick. Our experiment showed all of the elements we were testing to be accurate because the numbers we were getting correlated with the theories that were discussed in the reading. So yay for us! The only thing we would have changed if we could was that we would have a more sensitive and precise scale because we might have some skewed data because of our equipment. But besides that, our experiment was helpful in learning hands-on about torque.