Factors affecting the period of a Pendulum.

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H.E.Guinness                5/3/2007

Physics Coursework

Factors affecting the period of a Pendulum

Possible Variables:

Angle of pull back – I did a quick experiment (see below) and proved that this makes no difference.

Type of string – this is a discrete variable and would not give good results for a graph.

Mass on the end of the String – this would be a good choice, but after a quick experiment I decided that the length makes more difference.

Length of the String (distance of centre of mass from pivot) – I will investigate this variable.

Experiment to show the angle of pullback makes little or no difference

Length: 50cm, Mass: 200g

These readings are very similar and although this doesn’t prove that the angle of pullback has no effect, it shows that within the accuracy of this experiment it has no effect.

I think that this is because if you pull it back further, then although the mass has further to fall, all that time it is accelerating and so it moves faster.

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Hypothesis

As the length increases, the distance that the mass has to move increases proportionally. This would suggest that the time for one oscillation would be directly proportional to the distance from the pivot; however, all the time the mass is falling it is accelerating so it would be less than proportional, and as it accelerates at a rate of km/s2, the time for one oscillation will be km/s2, and if the distance it must travel is directly proportional to the length we can replace m with l and get and get kL/ s2, and if s is the ...

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