A low cost technique to find gravitational acceleration

TL;DR

This paper introduces an inexpensive method to measure gravitational acceleration by using a discharging RC circuit to accurately determine free fall time, overcoming short-duration measurement challenges.

Contribution

It presents a novel low-cost technique employing an RC circuit to measure free fall time, providing an alternative to traditional methods like pendulums and direct timing.

Findings

The RC circuit method accurately measures short free fall times.

The technique is cost-effective and easy to implement.

It offers comparable accuracy to conventional methods.

Abstract

The most common way to find gravitational acceleration, g, in a laboratory is to use a simple pendulum and a clock. Alternately, g can be calculated by measuring time and distance for a free fall. Since the time of free fall in a laboratory is short, there are challenges in measuring the short period. In this article, a low cost technique to measure the time for a free fall using a discharging RC circuit is discussed.