Many physics projects recently designed for high school teachers use Arduino as the main tool for managing sensors and data acquisition. This is a low-cost integrated development environment programmed with a simplified version of the C++ language. In comparison, the Raspberry Pi 3 platform, which also allows for the design of physics projects, can expose students to the use of the most trending language in the field: Python. With this in mind, we have developed a project to measure the acceleration of objects due to gravity near the Earth’s surface using a Raspberry Pi 3 computer and Python as the programming language. It utilizes an infrared sensor connected to the Raspberry Pi 3, a monitor with an HDMI connection, a mouse, and a keyboard. The experiment yields results with a percentage difference of 2.8% on average for an estimated value of the gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s2.

Topics
Laboratory procedures, Sensors, Software engineering, Data acquisition, Electrical circuits, Java, Programming languages, Students, Teaching, Educator
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Readers may download the supplemental material at TPT Online, http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/10.0003472, under the Supplemental tab.
© 2021 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2021
American Association of Physics Teachers

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