Development of Low-cost Photogate Assembly for Time Measurement

Rohan D. Lahane, Shirish R. Pathare, Bhagyashri G. Latad, Arvind Paranjpye

Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education

Students are introduced to the concepts such as force, motion in school syllabus. They perform experiments like sliding or rolling of an object on an inclined plane or find out the acceleration due to gravity using simple pendulum. The measurement of time in these experiments is done using a hand-held stopwatch. In this paper, we present an inexpensive and portable photogate assembly with a timer that can be used to measure time in different experiments in physics.