Experimental dataset of U-folded falling chain under various openings with high-speed imaging

A folded chain hanged by its two ends in U-shape at the same level with an opening, distance, between its two tips is known as U-folded chain, as studied in Markou et al. (2023). When one of the tips is fixed and the other one is released, the free tip of the U-folded falling chain accelerates faster than gravity, due to momentum conservation. This counterintuitive fact has long excited mechanicians around the globe. In the current paper we present a group of datasets (tip's coordinate timeseries), comprising three different subsets of this variable-mass dynamical system. A series of experiments of a U-folded falling chain of length 1.51m with total mass 31 gm, have been recorded with a high-speed imaging (2000fps) (Markou et al., 2023). The distance between the tips of the chain (opening) varies throughout the experimental session series: (i) 0.045m, (ii) 0.087m and (iii) 0.128m. Three timeseries of the tip's coordinates (x,y) have been extracted using an edge detector based method, from the recorded high-speed videos.