AP Physics B Lab B: What Determines the Period of a Pendulum?

This lab is a little unusual in that we are going to pool data from everyone. Please hand in a copy of your data before you
leave today, and keep a copy for yourself!

What are we trying to do?

In the early 1600s, Galileo discovered an approximate formula for the amount of time needed for a mass on a
pendulum to complete a round trip (call this T, the period of oscillation.) We will derive the exact (well, nearly exact)
formula in class, and you can look it up in your book. But for the time being we will try to determine this formula
empirically (on the basis of experimental data.)

Here are some factors that might go into the formula: The length of the pendulum, the mass at the end of the
pendulum, the distance travelled by the mass (or what is nearly the same thing, the initial angle the mass is released from),
the time of day, the strength of g. Some of these things are within our control, and some are not. We will concentrate on
the mass and the length.

Materials needed: stopwatch or timer

ring stand with perpendicular rod & right-angled connector
Cclamp (to keep ring stand from falling)
string or cord
meter stick
two or three different weights (200 g, 500 g, 1 kg)
paper to record results

SetUp:

Fix the ring stand to a desk with the Cclamp. Attach a small rod perpendicular to the upright of the ring stand
with the connector. Obtain a length of string or cord anywhere in the range 0.3 to 1.5 meters. Attach the string to both the
perpendicular and to one of your weights.

Procedure:

Work in pairs. Measure as accurately as you can the length of the string from the perpendicular to the center of the
weight. Record this length. Record also the mass on the end of the string.

Pull back the mass a small distance (for a short length of string, perhaps six centimeters, say three inches; in any
case, keep the angular displacement from the vertical within ten degrees or so) and release it. With the stopwatch or timer,
determine the time needed for ten full oscillations (from starting point back to starting point). Record your data. Please do
this two or three times for a given string length and mass.

Repeat with the same length of string and a different mass. (Dont forget to re-measure the string from the
perpendicular to the center of the weight; presumably the weights have different lengths!)

Repeat with four or five lengths of string.

At the end of all this work, you should have at least three measurements of two different masses and a length of
string, for five or six lengths of string (about thirty trials in all.) They should look something like this:

mass length time (10 oscillations) average (one oscillation)

200 g 0.83 m 17.9, 18.4, 18.2 1.82 sec
500 g 0.87 m 18.4, 18.7, 18.9 1.87 sec
200 g 1.23 m 22.0, 22.2, 22.2 2.21 sec
500 g 1.27 m 22.4, 22.6, 22.1 2.24 sec

Make a copy of your data, and hand it in. (Use the provided data sheets.) Your friendly physics teacher will put all the data
together. We are going to do a good deal of our analysis using a computer spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel.) You dont need to
do any work yet on the data analysis.