Come valorizzare un antico esperimento didattico con la tecnica MBL: la macchina di Atwood per condurre una ricerca sperimentale sul moto

Atwood’s machine is a device born in the XVIII century as an aid for teaching mechanics; a reduced and simplified version of such device still appears in physics textbooks, as an application of Newton’s second law. An Atwood’s machine interfaced to a PC by means of position and force sensors becomes a device for a detailed investigation on the motion of bodies subject to forces that change with position. The approach is suitable, in particular for emphasizing the process of refining the theoretical model (by iterated approximations) in order to account for the experimental results.