Friction
Friction
4: Friction
(Static and Kinetic Friction and Coefficients, µs , µk )
General instructions for the on-line laboratory
1. Open your browser and go to Google Search. Type amrita.olabs.edu.in. Alternatively, click
on this link: Amrita Online Labs. Your browser screen should show the head mast of the
Amrita main website as shown in Figure 1 below:
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4. Clicking on the icon as described in Figure 3 brings up the screen as shown in Figure 4.
Note that the top portion of the page consists of a horizontal list of tabbed icons with the
left-most tab marked Theory already chosen by default. You can browse and scroll around
this page to familiarize yourself with what the experiment is all about.
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Experiment 4: Friction (Online version)
Objective:
1. To study the relationship between the force of limiting friction, (fs )max and the normal
reactive force, N .
2. To determine experimentally the coefficient of static friction (µs ) between different materials
in physical contact.
Theory:
When one body makes an attempt to slide over another body, an opposing force called friction
arises as a reaction to the applied force and acts in the opposite direction.
Static friction is the type of friction that exists when two objects touch each other at rest.
It has a maximum value called limiting friction, (fs )max , which is equal to the least amount
of applied force required to move the body from rest. When the external force F is increased,
there comes a point at which the body is just on the verge of moving. At this stage, the force
of friction is at its maximum, and is thus called limiting friction.
It has been experimentally verified that
when a block of weight W is placed on a level
surface so that the normal force N of the sur-
face on the block is equal to the block’s weight,
frictional force (f )
f k = µk N = µk W = µk M g (2)
As can be seen in Figure 6, since kinetic friction fk is less than limiting friction (fs )max , it also
follows that
µk < µ s (3)
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Procedure for Simulated Experiment:
1. While the top of your screen is as shown on Figure 4, click on the tab labeled Simulator,
to bring up the friction simulator as shown in Figure 7.
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2. For the first simulation run, take the start-
ing default values for the left panel parame-
ters. Note that the default material for both
the block and the table surface is wood.
The default initial block weight is 1000 g
and the starting value of the hanging weight
is 300 g.
To start the simulation, move the mouse
pointer to the Hanging weight slider and click
on it. The slider button will momentarily turn
blue when it is clicked and will turn back to
gray when the mouse button is released. At this
point, the slider is activated. This is shown in Figure 9: Set weight values.
Figure 9. Then, gradually increase the hanging
weight value in 100 g-increments by pressing on the right-arrow key, →. This will increase
the hanging weight value to 400 g, a blue line sloping upward appears on the graph and an
additional weight appears on the hanger. Another press on the right-arrow key increases
the hanging weight to 500 g. At this point, the limiting friction is reached, sliding friction
takes over and the block slides the the right until it hits the stop as shown in Figure 10.
3. To get the results of the first simulation, click on the Show result checkbox and scroll down
the left panel by dragging down the vertical scroll bar that appears on the right side of the
control panel. Note the final values of the limiting friction (fs )max , the normal reaction N
and the resulting value of the coefficient of static friction µs . Your screen should be similar
to that shown in Figure 10. Take a screenshot of the final screen as part of your lab result
and record the values of the parameters in the first row of Table 1.
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Trial Normal Force Limiting friction Friction Coefficient
# N , g wt (fs )max , g wt µs = (fs )max /N
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