This is for the Simple Pendulum Experiment. 1a. Before pasco equipment was avail

Question

This is for the Simple Pendulum Experiment.

1a. Before pasco equipment was available, stopwatches were used to measure the total time for 50 oscillations and was then divided by 50 to get the period. Why did we do this instead of simply timing 1 oscillation and calling it a day?

b. Imagine taking your pendulum to the North Pole and setting it in motion swinging in a plane. After 6 hours, assuming negligible friction, the pendulum would no longer appear to be swinging in the same plane. Why? In which plane would it appear to be swinging?

Explanation / Answer

By doing experiment with stopwatches , one can not switch on the clock and set the pendulum into oscilations simultaniously. So this gives the scope of error to 10% to 25% in estimating the time period,(if T=1 second we would count 1.25 sec or 0.75 sec).

Now if we increase the no of oscilations to 50 , then we can be stable and count the no oscilations to any 50 and minimize the error.

b) When we swing the simple pendulum at North Pole of the earth , each the pendulum swing there is small rotation of the Earth. So when the pendulum siwngs and reaches the heighest point it will not change it plane of trajectory. So it seems to have oscilations in diffrent planes. If it is going to swing for complete 6 hours (Quater a day) the siwng plane will shift from North -South plane to East -West plane, as Earth rotates by 90 deg.

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