PHYSICS IA – Simple Pendulum
Factors Affecting Time Period of a Simple Pendulum
A mass m hanging from a string whose length is L and a pivot point on which this mass is fixed are what a simple pendulum (which was discovered during the 10th century by Ibn Yusuf) consists of. During the 17th century, it is developed by some physicist, especially by Galileo. When the mass hanging from the string is released with an initial angle, it starts to move with a periodic motion. The motion can be approximated as a simple harmonic motion if the pendulum swings through a small angle (so sin (ө) can be approximated as ө). The frequency and period for the simple pendulum are the independent of the initial angle of the movement (initial position of the…show more content… Since I had done the experiment before even doing the theory the theory, hence it was an advantage for me because it gave me an insight of this wonderful topic and a clear understanding and a picture of what this topic was all about. Additionally, I think that that the reason for doing the experiment was to find how what all factors affect the time period of the pendulum. It was really interesting to see how even if we reduce or increase the mass, the time period always remained the same. Moreover, this intrigued more questions because of which I learnt a lot about this topic…show more content… The stand on which the pendulum hung was very light and kept on moving constantly. The problem here was that the base of the stand was very light and hence that also affected time in a way. However if the base of the stand would have been heavy, then the reading would have been more accurate.
In addition to this, I believe that the forced oscillations in the starting did make a difference and if we can find a way to alter that then the experiment would have given us more accurate readings.
Lastly, we used manual stopwatches instead of using motion sensors which further affected calculating the time period. This is because we are humans and we have some specific reaction time which depends from one person to another, hence we stopped the time at what we thought was the best location where the pendulum had first started oscillating. However if we would have used electronic motion sensors then the it would have been much better because the readings we would have got then would have been more accurate.
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