Physics Education using a Smartphone Accelerometer

TL;DR

This paper presents an experiment where a smartphone's accelerometer data was used to analyze circular motion in a physics education context, demonstrating good agreement with theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a practical method for physics teaching using smartphone sensors to measure and analyze motion in real-time.

Findings

Accelerometer data matched theoretical predictions

Demonstrated feasibility of smartphone-based physics experiments

Provided a simple, accessible experimental setup

Abstract

Described is an experiment in which a smartphone was caused to move at steady state in a vertical plane, on a path that was nearly circular. During a time interval of data acquisition that encompassed multiple orbits, the acceleration of the phone was measured by means of its internal accelerometer. A subsequent analysis of the data that was collected shows reasonable agreement between experiment and a simple theory of the motion.