Experimental support for Newton's second law

Abstract

The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the relationship between the net force and the acceleration of a system. This system was composed of a cart carrying varying masses connected by a string over a pulley to a counterweight. For each cart mass, three trials were conducted, and the time required for the cart to travel 0.5 m was recorded. Acceleration was then calculated from this data. As the cart’s mass increased, its acceleration decreased, which showed the inverse relationship between mass and acceleration as stated by Newton's Second Law. These findings confirm that acceleration depends on both net force and mass, as described by F=ma.