Undergraduate physics laboratories seldom have experiments that measure the Coriolis acceleration. This has traditionally been the case owing to the inherent complexities of making such measurements. Articles on the experimental determination of the Coriolis acceleration are few and far between in the physics literature. However, because modern smartphones come with a raft of built-in sensors, we have a unique opportunity to experimentally determine the Coriolis acceleration conveniently in a pedagogically enlightening environment at modest cost by using student-owned smartphones. Here we employ the gyroscope and accelerometer in a smartphone to verify the dependence of Coriolis acceleration on the angular velocity of a rotatingtrack and the speed of the sliding smartphone.

The gyroscope in a smartphone was employed in a physics laboratory setting to verify the conservation of angular momentum and the nonconservation of rotational kinetic energy. As is well-known, smartphones are ubiquitous on college campuses. These devices have a panoply of built-in sensors. This creates a unique opportunity for a new paradigm in the physics laboratory.1–3 Many traditional physics experiments can now be performed very conveniently in a pedagogically enlightening environment while simultaneously reducing the laboratory budget substantially by using student-owned smartphones.

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The introduction of the Wireless Smart Cart by PASCO scientific in April 2016 has ushered in a paradigm shift in the design and implementation of low-cost undergraduate physics and engineering laboratory experiments. The use of smartphones in experimental physics is by now widely accepted and documented. The smart cart in combination with student-owned smartphones and free apps has opened up a new universe of low-cost experiments that have traditionally required cumbersome and expensive equipment. In this paper we demonstrate the simplicity, convenience, and cost saving achieved by replacing a plethora of traditional laboratory sensors, wires, air tracks, and other equipment clutter with the smart cart and the free SPARKvue app for smartphones by carrying out an experiment on damped oscillations.