[nozo]

Hi, I was doing my lab on free fall and I'm not sure how to solve for the average acceleration.

Ok, lemme just make up some #s, say I get the following values for acceleration:

0
5.6
4.2
3.4

Now when I calculate the average including the "0," it gave me 8.60
But when I calculate the average without including the "0", it gave me 9.79

So Im confused, which one is the right way to calculate the average acceleration? I mean if I didn't include the "0", obviously it's nearer the true value of gravity which is 9.81

Please *delete me*

[sdekivit]

if you did the same experiment 4 times in exaclty the same way, I would exclude the '0'. Because the other values are relatively close to each other, the '0' suggests something went wrong in this experiment.

[nozo]

Well I didn't have time to repeat the experiment, but in actuality, the first row on the Acceleration column was left blank (so was Distance and Velocity), but Time was zero (initial time = 0), so I assumed that initial Acceleration was zero as well.

Anyway thanks, I guess I should not include it then