Objective
An experimental demonstration of Newton’s second law.

Principle
A cart (glider) on a horizontal air track accelerates using a thread, a pulley, and a weight influenced by gravity. The
mass of the weight and the cart are weighed.
At two different positions, photogates measure the speed of the cart as well as the time interval spent between the
two photogates. The actual acceleration of the cart is calculated from these measurements.
Newton’s second law leads to a theoretical value for the acceleration which is compared to the measured one.