Plan:
I have isolated the key factors that will affect the swing of the pendulum as: The angle of release
The length of the pendulum arm
The weight of the bob
In this experiment I will concentrate on the length of the pendulum rod, as I feel this will have the most affect on the results. I will be keeping the ‘mass’ and the ‘angle of release’ the same throughout the experiment
From this I will predict that a shorter rod will result in the pendulum completing more swings in a given time, I have predicted this because:
If a car was to negotiate a 90 degrees corner,
the fastest route would be one where it could
turn very quickly, e.g.
A car negotiating this corner may cover something in the range of 5 - 10m, if it could take the corner in a ‘tighter’ fashion (simulating a smaller rod) The effect would be that the car would cover a shorter distance, resulting in the corner taking a shorter time to negotiate.
The apparatus I will use for this experiment will be:
A stand
A boss
A clamp
String
10g slotted mass’s
A stop clock
Diagram:
Once I have set up the apparatus, I will hold the bob in my hand, and release it from a 45 degrees angles, then I will count how many times the pendulum swings back and forth, thus completing one swing.
Obtaining Evidence:
To make the results accurate I repeated each experiment 3 times, and then averaged the 3 results to give an accurate and fair measurement.
From this graph you can see that there is a clear connection between the length of the rod and the number of swings, in that the shorter the rod, the more swings the pendulum can complete. This supports my prediction because, as the rod was made longer, the number of swings completed in 30 seconds decreased.
Evaluation:
I feel that the results that were gathered were accurate and fair as the repeats gave similar results, and set a clear trend.
I feel the method was appropriate but that it could have been made better by using some kind of automated counting device such a
