Data Acquisition

This howto addresses taking data from the Apple Performa's using the program MacMotion and how to analyze that data with Excel

• Step one, get some data with MacMotion - ok, so now you have a graph that you like and want to keep to use in your lab report.
• Go File-Export. This will export your data.
• Choose a name for you file - be short, but descriptive. A good one would be run1.txt (if you remember which run one is). If you will be using this file on a PC, make sure you include th .txt part to the file name.
• Make sure you check the box that says "save as a text file" if you do not do this, it will save as a MacMotion file which will be useless to you unless you have MacMotion installed at home.
• Choose the location to save the file. I recommend the "desktop" if you want to transfer via a floppy disk, then choose your floppy.

Notes about what you get:

• What does MacMotion actually export? It is not the graph or picture that you saw, but the data behind that. It exports a "data table" with the values for (in this order) time, distance, velocity, acceleration, and force. So when you open this in Excel, you will see 5 collums of numbers (with no labels).

If you want to analyze this (i.e. find the acceleration). Go on to the page on dealing with data from MacMotion