I'm studying moment of inertia for an L-shaped piece of metal. I used a photogate and shit, got torques and the according angular accelerations. The moment of inertia is the slope that you get from plotting the results. (I = torque / angular acceleration)
There are several things that went wrong I think.
First off, I removed the piece of I was studying from the rotating assembly, so I could get its moment of inertia by subtracting the result I got for the whole setup and from the result I'd get without the piece. I didn't do the slope thing for getting the moment of inertia without the piece - just the straight up calculation I = tau / alpha. For some reason this result is completely different from what it should be. Why?
Another thing, I first calculated the theoretical moment of inertia for the piece. The theoretical result is larger (1,3*10^-3) than the result for the entire setup (1,18*10^-3). Weird.
There are several things that went wrong I think.
First off, I removed the piece of I was studying from the rotating assembly, so I could get its moment of inertia by subtracting the result I got for the whole setup and from the result I'd get without the piece. I didn't do the slope thing for getting the moment of inertia without the piece - just the straight up calculation I = tau / alpha. For some reason this result is completely different from what it should be. Why?
Another thing, I first calculated the theoretical moment of inertia for the piece. The theoretical result is larger (1,3*10^-3) than the result for the entire setup (1,18*10^-3). Weird.
