A mass M, that we will call the "cart mass," on a level air track, is connected by a piece of audiotape passing over a nearly frictionless air pulley pulley to a much smaller mass m<<M, that we will call the "accelerating mass," as seen in the photograph at the left below.
Releasing M allows m to accelerate it along the air track. The timer measures the time taken for a flag on the top of the air track glider to travel from photocell gate "A" to gate "B," which turns out to be exactly 2.00 seconds. See a video of the action by clicking your mouse on the photograph at the left above.
Now suppose that the same experiment is performed with cart mass M being increased to 2M, as seen in the photograph at the right above. How long will the glider take to travel the distance D from photocell gate "A" to gate "B"?
The time taken for mass m to accelerate mass 2M a distance of D from A to B will be:
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