A simple pendulum about one meter long is seen in the photograph below. Click your mouse on the photo to see it swing. The counter seen in the video counts frames; the period of the pendulum is about 60.2 frames, which is about 2.01 seconds.
The equation most often used for the period of a pendulum in terms of its length L is:
is the
acceleration
of
gravity. Note that this equation is angle-independpent; it makes no
mention of the angle at which the pendulum is swinging.
You probably noticed that the pendulum was swung at a relatively small angle, a few degrees of arc, in the video above. Now suppose that we release the pendulum from a rather larger angle, around 50o, as seen in the photograph below.
The question ths week involves how, if at all, the period of the pendulum might change when its angle increases. When the pendulum swings at a large angle, compared with its period at a small angle, seen in the video above, the period of the large angle pendulum:
Click here for Answer #338 after March 2, 2009.
