How to Graph in Excel for Physics
Microsoft Office Excel can help you with many different types of applications, including physics. More specifically, it can help you to create graphs for your physics problems. These graphs can help you to determine if experiments were done correctly and if the data concurs with what you wrote in your hypothesis. Most of the graphs created for physics involve circles and radiuses.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Open Microsoft Office Excel and a new workbook.
-
2
Type "Circumference" in cell A1 and type "Radius" in cell B1.
-
-
3
Fill in your information from your experiment in the appropriate column. You should use about five to ten results. For this example, type 5.09, 15.6, 13.4, 20.56 and 31.89 in cells A2, A3, A4, A5 and A6. Then type 2.1, 3.5, 5.2, 4.13 and 3.2 in cells B2, B3, B4, B5 and B6.
-
4
Click in any empty cell in the workbook and press the "Chart Wizard" button. It looks like a small bar graph.
-
5
Choose the "XY (Scatter)" chart type from the list on the left of the "Chart Wizard" window and then press "Next."
-
6
Click on the "Series" tab on the top of the window and then the "Add" button.
-
7
Click on the small icon at the right end of the "X Values" row, this will shrink the window so there is room for you to see your workbook and the cells you are going to select.
-
8
Highlight all of the values in the "Radius" column by clicking on a value and dragging the mouse over the remaining values. Click on the icon at the far right of the window to expand the window again.
-
9
Click on the same collapse button on the "Y Values" row and highlight the values in the "Circumference" column, like you did with the "Radius" values.
-
10
Click "Next" after the preview of your graph appears.
-
11
Add a title and axis headings for the different parts of the graph in the window that appears next. Click "Next" when you are finished with your titles.
-
12
Select where you would like your new graph to be placed in Excel. Click "As new sheet" to open the graph on a new page of your workbook, or "As object in" to put the graph on your current sheet of your workbook.
-
13
Click "Finish" and your graph will appear wherever you clicked for it to go.
-
1
References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
