Motion Sensor Setup:

Please note: the motion sensors can be a little bit finicky, so please be patient with them; in some cases we might have to fiddle around with them a little.

Setup:

Take the sonic ranger (motion detector) out of the plastic storage box on your lab station, and plug it into the input of the LabPro interface attached to your PC. You need to put a flat object (flag) on the cart that the motion detector is going to detect, facing the detector, which should be mounted above the airtrack.

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The minimum range that the motion detector can measure is about 0.3 m, so you will always want to be at least that far away.  The maximum range is supposed to be 6 m, but is not the case with all of them.

  1. Start LoggerPro, the interface software (Start - Academic - Physics - Vernier - Logger Pro). It should automatically detect the motion sensor, and setup tables and graphs for the kinematic variables.
  2. You may need to find the motion sensor setup in order to change the length of time for which it takes data.
  3. Start the cart in motion, and then click the Collect button.
  4. Either wait for time to run out, or hit the stop button when you are done taking data.
  5. Be sure to save the LoggerPro file, or copy the data to another program (Excel, Origin, etc.) every time unless you are sure you want to get rid of the data. Make sure if you are copying the data, that the correct data has copied (compare the LoggerPro data with the data that you have copied).