Ride an elevator and lose five pounds
Looking for a quick and easy way to lose or gain five pounds? Mrs. Gifford’s AP and Pre-AP Physics classes discovered that riding an elevator is the key to your success. The students took turns in groups riding the elevator up and down evaluating the weight of one of the students standing on a scale.
“The purpose of this lab is for students to observe the differences in the apparent weight as a person accelerates in the negative and positive directions on an elevator,” Physics teacher, Jean Gifford said.
The results of this lab will show that when the elevator accelerates in the positive direction the scale appears to increase by five pounds, and when the elevator accelerates in the negative direction the scale appears to decrease by five pounds.
However, the fluctuations of weights are actually of the apparent weight, or the amount of force the ground is pushing up on you, which is what a scale actually measures.
“After this lab, I finally understand apparent weight, because your acceleration is decreasing which is why your stomach drops when you are riding the Tower of Terror at Disney World,” Lynsie Patschke (11) said.
This is the first year Mrs. Gifford was able to do this lab, because the absence of elevators at the old school. “My students all produced very excellent results from this lab, and I plan on doing this lab many more years to come,” Mrs. Gifford said. Using the resources of our new school, physics students have discovered that physics really is all around us. “This lab really made me realize how everything we do involves physics... even riding in an elevator,” Ashley Smith (11) said.
http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/483177/newspaperid/3556/Ride_an_Elevator_and_Lose_Five_Pounds.aspx