Working with Spreadsheets on Microsoft Excel

Working with Spreadsheets

Purpose: To get comfortable using Excel to perform simple calculations and display data acquired from calculations on a graph.

Materials/Equipment: 

• Laptop with Microsoft Excel                                                                                                                         

Procedure: Upon receiving the instructions from our professor, the lab was relatively straight forward. The class got paired up in groups of 2 and each group was given a laptop with Microsoft Excel to create spreadsheets for equations and values at given inputs.

The first spreadsheet was a function involving sine:

A * sin(Bx+C)

For this function we were asked to have set values for the variables A, B, and C. Those values were the following:

A = 5

B = 3

C = Pi/3

Using the copy feature on excel we created inputs for the variable x of up to 10 radians using increments of 0.1

Upon acquiring the output values, we copied them onto a graphing application and printed the graph created by 

the function.

A sample of one of our calculations:

5 * sin(3*0+Pi/3) = .0913801381

Once we completed this part of the lab we continued on to a second spreadsheet that this time involved a

function similar to a kinematics formula:

y = A + Bx + Cx^2

A was treated as our position, B as our velocity, and C our acceleration with the following values and units:

A = 1000 meters

B = 50 meters/second

C = -9.8 meters/second^2 (down direction being negative)

The variable x played the role of time in seconds. We were instructed to use increments of 0.2 for the input 

values. My lab partner and I decided to go up to 20 seconds to create a solid looking parabola shaped graph.

Here is a sample calculation:

40 meters = 1000 m + 50 m/s(20s) + -4.9 m/s^2(20s^2)

Results: 

A. B.

Graph A is our y = A + Bx + Cx^2 function plotted. The graph resembles the motion of that of a free falling object thrown in the air.

Graph B is our sine function plotted. 

Conclusions: I thought this lab was great for those of us like myself who are newbies to useful programs like Excel. I cannot say that my lab partner and I encountered any sources of error since the lab was relatively straight forward and could be followed easily as long as the directions were read carefully. After doing this lab I feel a lot more confident about using Excel to make calculations for me and will be likely using it to calculate my GPA along with other stuff.