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Students Make Amazing Discoveries!


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Students at Irondequoit High School have done it again. They’ve discovered a new and innovative way to determine the acceleration due to gravity using everyday tools such as a stopwatch, meter stick, and a basketball. To begin, brave student Danielle McKay climbed to the ceiling in order to measure the height of the room. “It was pretty cold up there,” McKay told us, “But it was worth it for science.” She dropped the basketball from the ceiling and timed how long it took to reach the ground. Scientist Emma Schum stood nearby taking down the measurements. After three trials, the times were averaged to .91 seconds of freefall. The basketball has not released a statement on his feelings about this at the time. Schum and McKay then used their favorite kinematic equation to determine the acceleration of the basketball. After much calculating and algebra, the acceleration was determined to be 6.28 meters per second squared. The team knew right away that something had gone horribly wrong. Schum told us, “We know the accepted acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 meters per second squared, so there must have been a stopwatch error.” McKay admits that “it was windy” that day. The percent error of this experiment has been confirmed to be at .36 at this time. Nonetheless, this experiment has broken records in three countries and the team responsible will go down in history for their discoveries.

Haleigh Temple, reporter.

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