Students want to design an experiment to study gravity. They decide they will drop four objects with the same mass from the top of their school’s bleachers. They will time how long each object takes to reach the ground. How can they improve confidence in the experiment’s results?

Question

Responses

Randomly select the order in which the objects are dropped.

Drop all four objects at once.

Drop each object 10 times and use the average of each object’s fall times.

Let a different student time the drop of each object.

Answer 1

To improve confidence in the experiment's results, the most effective option would be:

Drop each object 10 times and use the average of each object’s fall times.

This approach reduces the impact of any potential timing errors or discrepancies in individual trials, providing a more reliable measure of the fall time for each object. Taking multiple measurements and averaging the results helps to account for variations and improves the overall accuracy of the experiment.