CENCO® AP Physics Lab 1.07: Conservation of Energy within a System

Find the spring constant of a projectile launcher using the potential energy of its projectile.

Introducing the new CENCO AP Physics lab series!

Ideal for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, IB DP Physics, and advanced/honors physics courses, each of the 35 experiments is aligned with the revised College Board AP curriculum. These innovative labs go way beyond traditional exercises, turning real-world scenarios into true guided-inquiry investigations. Students are given a goal, but the investigation is driven by their ideas. As they draw conclusions, students report their results using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning model. The teacher guides and student manuals are authored and reviewed by AP Physics teachers with decades of combined experience, so you can trust the setups to be successful in your classroom. All labs come complete with instructions and materials for one lab group of 2 to 4 students. For your convenience, labs are packaged to allow you to purchase only what is required for each experiment.

This unique guided inquiry lab combines the principles of projectile motion and energy balances. Students design an experiment using a simple vertical projectile launcher and several projectiles that vary by mass. By measuring the maximum height of the projectiles, students can perform an energy balance and determine the spring constant of the compression spring inside the launcher.