Effect of mass on a pendulum
Introduction
This experimental project was undertaken during the 2021/2020 academic year. It was the second laboratory project of the course Experimental Physics 2 that I took as part of my degree in Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.
This project explores the effect that the mass of a pendulum has on its motion. Different masses were attatched to the pendulum to try to determine the effect of mass on the damping. The project was particularly focussed on determining the parameter γ for each mass and combining them to produce an estimate of b (mass independent).
Abstract
The effect of mass on the damping of a pendulum was verified by analysing several videos of pendulums with different masses. The observed data for each ball was compared to the provided model to refine the parameters of the motion for each case and to obtain a best estimate of γ, which causes the damping. The different values of γ were used to obtain a best estimate of b, the damping parameter which depends only on the geometrical properties of the Balls (which were identical in that sense). The experimentally determined value of b was 1.620(12)· 10^(−4) kg/s . However, this value was found to disagree with the theoretical expectations by one order of magnitude. Such discrepancy might arise for choosing an unsuitable model of friction to describe the data.