Overview
For the "in-person" lab, for each configuration (apparatus, apparatus-disk, apparatus-disk-ring) you would first determine a mass attached to the end of a pulley that would fall to floor in roughly 10 seconds. Then you would use logger pro, and a 10 hole ring with a light sensor attached to the equipment to determine the maximum rotational rate. Once the mass hits the floor, it no longer pulls the string - so the speed would decrease shortly after the mass hits the floor. Knowing the initial potential energy and final kinetic energy, you can determine the moment of inertia (rotational inertia) of the rotating items. These results then can be used to determine the moment of inertia of the individual items. Using definitions for moment of inertia, you can compare the experimental results to the theoretical values and note the strong similarities. In the real lab, this is probably the most dead-on lab we run!
This lab took about 4 days of work - strangely a ton of debugging - pulleys rotating the wrong way, increasing the distance didn't take longer times. I almost lost my mind chasing down these issues.
Simple Harmonic Motion Lab
There are 2 parts to the lab, spring oscillation and pendulum oscillation. The g used for the experiment is 9.81 m/s2.
For the pendulum, ordinarily we would have you put different objects at the end of the pendulum and measure their mass. I wrote code that allows you to choose the mass of the object. I think I need to rewrite the code and make the relation between mass and radius non-linear, maybe I will before you see the lab. Anyhow, for 4 different masses, measure the time for 20 oscillations, keeping the length constant - maybe try 80 cm at 2 degrees max.
Then continuing with the pendulum, for a fixed mass, measure the time for 20 oscillations for lengths 20, 40, 60, and 80 cm.
For the spring, record the location of the end of the spring for having 0, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 g attached to it (technically 0 g is nothing attached). Then measure the time for 20 oscillations for 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 g attached. Don't forget to record the mass of the spring!
Then lots of calculations await... you will need 3 graphs with best-fit lines included with your report - T2 vs L for the pendulum, F vs d, and T2 vs (mattached+1/3 spring) for the spring.
This lab took about 5 days of work - notice the awesome ruler and click in the picture... all from scratch. Also, similar to last lab a ton of debugging (fixed 3 more as I wrote this) - probably some strange behavior left - but hey, I only have 24 hours a day to give :)