Question

What are the effects of friction and air resistance? How do they affect your value of the measured acceleration?

Answer 1

Friction and air resistance both effects the motion of an object. They act in the direction opposite to the motion of the moving body. They slow down the body movement. Both will reduce the speed of the moving objects.

Actually friction is the opposing force acting between the body and the surface when the body moving on a surface. As the roughness increases, the friction increases. If we slide our hand on a surface we feel a resistance to our motion. This is becaue of the friction between hand and surface. It opposes the motion of the object on the surface when it moving or sliding.

Coming to air resistance, it is also.an opposing force caused by air to reduce the speed of the object. When we run on a road we feel some air flowing onto our head. It resists our motion also. It is also like a frictional force applied opposite to the moving body when passing through air.

Both affects the acceleration. Frition reduces the acceleration. By Newton's second law force is proportional to acceleration, the net force decreases on body when friction applied as friction will reduce some force vectors so acceleration also decreases.

Here acceleration depends on mass as they are inversely proportional. If we take a body falling from a height it feels some air resistance and experience reducing its speed. Air resistance depends on velocity and surface area of the object also. When falling, speed increases and reaches its maximum speed after some time. The acceleration also decreases less than g.