Angular acceleration

Introduction:
The purpose of this lab is to figure out the angular acceleration of object with known torque, and determine which factor would affect the angular acceleration the most: The magnitude of the force that creates torque, the radius of the spinning object, or the mass of the rotating object.
To fulfill the goals above, we did three types of experiments:
Experiment 1,2 and 3: Effect of changing the hanging mass
Experiment 1 and 4: Effect of changing the radius and which the hanging mass exerts a torgue
Experiment 4,5,6: Effect of changing the rotating mass

Apparatus:

   The rotating disk was placed on another disk with air blowing between them to create an almost frictionless surface of rotation.
   We would be able to change the rotating radius by attaching the string at inner or outer radius of the disk, and we could change the weight of the hanging mass, and we could also change the rotating mass by place different hanging mass on the rotating mass.
   The rotating system was connected to a computer so we could use logger pro to collect the angular acceleration.









The following stats are the different radius, masses we used in the experiment:

Data and Data Analysis:
Experiment 1:
(Hanging mass: 0.0245 kg; small torque pulley; top steel disk rotating)

We obtained that: α(down)=1.083 rad/s^2, α(up)=1.192 rad/s^ 2


Experiment 2:
(hanging mass: 0.050kg; small torque pulley; top steel disk rotating)

We obtained that: α(down)=2.083 rad/s^2, α(up)=2.500 rad/s^ 2

Experiment 3
(hanging mass: 0.075kg; small torque pulley; top steel disk rotating)

We obtained that: α(down)=2.597 rad/s^2, α(up)=4.328 rad/s^ 2

Experiment 4:
(hanging mass: 0.0245kg; large torque pulley; top steel disk rotating)

We obtained that: α(down)=2.110 rad/s^2, α(up)=2.316 rad/s^ 2

Experiment 5:
(hanging mass: 0.0245kg; large torque pulley; top aluminum rotating)

We obtained that: α(down)=5.955rad/s^2, α(up)=6.214 rad/s^ 2

Experiment 6:
(hanging mass: 0.0245kg; large torque pulley; top steel disk and bottom steel disk rotating together)

We obtained that: α(down)=0.7944rad/s^2, α(up)=1.562 rad/s^ 2

We organized the above collected data into the following table:

Conclusion:
As a result, we found that the angular acceleration to be directly proportional to the hanging mass when other conditions are the same; the angular acceleration is directly proportional to the radius the torque was applied to when other conditions are the same; the larger the rotating mass is, the smaller the angular acceleration will be when other conditions are the same.