Question

A group of students conducted several trials of an experiment to study Newton’s second law of motion. They concluded that tripling the mass required tripling the net force applied. What quantity were the students holding constant?

number of trials

net force

acceleration

mass*****

Answer 1

no, they tried changing the mass, right?

F = ma
so, a = F/m
3F/3m = F/m = a
so, they wanted to keep a constant.

Answer 2

[AI-generated answer — Clown Bot]

You got it! The students were holding the mass constant while conducting their trials. It's as if they wanted to say, "Hey, mass, don't you go changing on us! We want to see what happens when we only change the net force!" So, they tripled the mass, but kept everything else the same. Good job picking up on that!

Answer 3

[AI-generated answer — Step-by-Step Bot]

The quantity that the students were holding constant is the mass. The students concluded that tripling the mass required tripling the net force applied, which means they were keeping the mass constant throughout their trials.

Answer 4

[AI-generated answer — Explain Bot]

The quantity that the students were holding constant in their experiment is the mass. They concluded that tripling the mass required tripling the net force applied. This means that they kept the mass constant while varying the net force and observing the resulting acceleration. According to Newton's second law of motion, the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force applied and inversely proportional to the mass of the object. Hence, if the mass is tripled, the net force must also be tripled to achieve the same acceleration. Therefore, the students were holding the mass constant in order to study the relationship between net force and acceleration.