The Physics Teacher, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 85–87, February 2007
©2007 American Association of Physics Teachers. All rights reserved.

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Playground Physics: Determining the Moment of Inertia of a Merry-Go-Round

Stephen Van Hook, Adam Lark, Jeff Hodges, Eric Celebrezze, and Lindsey Channels

Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH

A playground can provide a valuable physics education laboratory. For example, Taylor et al.1 describe bringing teachers in a workshop to a playground to examine the physics of a seesaw and slide, and briefly suggest experiments involving a merry-go-round. In this paper, we describe an experiment performed by students from a Society of Physics Students organization and their faculty advisor on a merry-go-round at a local park. The goal of the activity was for everyone to gain a greater understanding of the concepts of angular velocity, centripetal acceleration, moment of inertia, and conservation of angular momentum through their own personal experience—and to have fun, too. ©2007 American Association of Physics Teachers


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