A ball placed on the edge of a horizontal table is hit with a pendulum and thrown over the floor. The fall time is measured by recording the sounds produced by the collisions with the pendulum and the floor. If the height of the ball with respect to the floor is known, one can determine the acceleration of gravity.
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Software for recording and editing sounds can be found on the World Wide Web. An excellent freeware software is provided by “Audacity” (http://www.audacity. sourceforge.net/).
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