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Physics Department
Physics 0050/0070
Torsion Pendulum
Torsion Pendulum
Envision a rope hanging from a tree. Now, imagine that you, being the eco-friendly tree-hugging
Brown student that you are, decide to spend some quality time with the tree. First, you jump on
the rope and swing back and forth, simulating a simple pendulum, just like the ones you learned
about in your Physics class. After you and the rope come to rest once more, youre still not
satisfied with your rope-tree experience, so you wind up the rope, jump on, and let the rope
unwind while you experience the thrills of acceleration. The rope keeps winding up and
unwinding until it eventually slows to a halt.
Youve just been part of another type of pendulum! This type of pendulum, called a torsion
pendulum, is reliant on the intrinsic properties of the torsion wire (the rope in this case) that is,
how easily it twists (and twists back). Similar to a spring constant, where higher constant means
the spring is more rigid, ropes and strings also have a torsion constant k. In the rest of this
write-up, well show you how to calculate the torsion constant.
Theory
When a wire is twisted, it develops what is called a restoring torque in order to return to its rest
position. When the wire is twisted by a small angle , we can model from the formula
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1.)
Brown University
Physics Department
Physics 0050/0070
Torsion Pendulum
As there are no other forces acting on the string, and from our studies of rotational motion, we know
that our rotational system is (note that we are neglecting the small frictional damping force):
I k
2.)
where I is the moment of inertia in the system, and is angular acceleration. The above equation
can also be written as
d 2
k
dt 2
3.)
A solution to the above differential equation is (you can easily check the math):
(t ) A cos(t )
Upon taking the second derivative of we find that
k I 2
4 2
I
T2
4.)
k
. Then
I
5.)
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Brown University
Physics Department
Physics 0050/0070
Torsion Pendulum
Inertia Formula
(mbeam * L2) / 12
(mcyl * r2cyl) / 2
mr2sphere
After the distance measurements are taken, remove the spheres from the apparatus and determine
the necessary masses.
Calculate the total inertia; be sure your formula for total inertia is correct. You now have all
necessary data to calculate the torsion constant k. You can also vary the distance rsphere by
loosening the set screw and moving the spheres, from equation 5 you can easily see that
2
T 2 C (a 2mrsphere
)
6.)
4 2
.
k
2
Plot T 2 vs rsphere
for several different values of rsphere and verify equation 6, you should have a
d 2
d
k (t)
2
dt
dt
(7.)
where is the damping coefficient. With no driving force, (t ) 0 (as in this experiment), the
solution of equation 7 is as follows:
131205
Brown University
Physics Department
Physics 0050/0070
Torsion Pendulum
(t ) Ae t cos(t )
Here
(8.)
2I
finds / I as expected. The motion detector will measure the y component of the
oscillatory motion which will have the form y (t ) y max e t cos(t ) .From the computer plot
Frictional damping observed with a motion detector and Data Studio. Its important to start the pendulum with a
controlled amount of energy thats small enough to stay within the range of the motion detector, but also large
enough such that damping can be observed. Due to external vibrations, the pendulum will not dampen completely.
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