Force / Vector Addition

Terrance Gibson also had some notes on the Force Vector Addition lab, which he found to be very good:

On the Force Vector Addition lab, the purpose of the experiment is to examine vector addition using a force table. The setup of the lab is fairly easy and simple. The directions for the lab are straightforward and not misleading. The only problem I have seen with the lab was that the strings for the weights are hard to tie to the rings if you have fairly large hands, and you can waste a lot of time doing that. I also observed that the force table needs to be on a level surface, I tried it in different locations and came up with different data depending on how level the table was. But all in all, this is a wonderful lab for teaching the students Force Vector Addition.