Experiment to investigate the factors affecting the swing of a pendulum.

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Title: Experiment to investigate the factors affecting the swing of a pendulum.

Aim: To investigate how the period of oscillation of a pendulum is affected by the length of the string and the mass of the weight attached to the string.

Introduction:

A simple pendulum consists of a weight hanging at the end of a string. When a force is applied to the pendulum so that it is displaced by a small angle, the pendulum will swing to and fro at a constant rate under the effect of gravity. The path travelled by the weight is the arc of the pendulum and the period of the oscillation is the time taken for the weight to pass to and fro once over this arc.

In this experiment I will be investigating how the period of oscillation of the pendulum is affected by:

. The mass of the weight attached to the string

2. The length of the string.

In this experiment, I will also determine the value of the acceleration due to gravity using the relationship between T; the period of the oscillation and L; the length of the string.

Hypothesis:

. I predict that the period of oscillation will increase with increasing length of string. This is because a longer string will travel a grater distance than a shorter string given the same angle of displacement.

In the diagrams above, it can be seen that the longer string has a longer distance to move than the shorter string, hence its period of oscillation will be greater than that of the shorter string.

2. I predict that the period of oscillation will be independent of mass provided the angle of oscillation and the length of the string are constant. This is because the pendulum will always travel the same distance no matter the mass of the weight attached to it.

Apparatus:

. Retort stand and clamp,

2. G-clamp,

3. Metre rule,

4. 80cm string,

5. Stop watch.

6. Wooden blocks

7. Masses

8. Hook to attach masses to

Variables:

This experiment will be divided into two sections. The first part of the experiment will be investigating how period of oscillation changes with constant length of string and angle of displacement. The independent variables are the length of the string and angle of displacement while the dependent variable is the time taken for a specific number of oscillations.
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The second part of the experiment will be investigating how the period of oscillation changes with increase in the mass of the weight attached to the string. The independent variable will be the length of the string and the angle of displacement while the dependent variable is the weight of the mass attached to the string.

Procedure:

In the first part of the experiment, the clamp was attached to the retort stand. The G-clamp was used to fasten the retort stand to the table so as not to allow the retort stand to topple over. ...

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