Any ideas on wat i can do?? anything would be helpful.?

Question

We did an experiment in physics lab by swinging a pendulum and measuring its period. There were 2 measurements taken 10 timings of a single swing and 10 timings of 9 swings. The purpose of the experiment was to use a pendulum to demonstrate the random nature of a physical measurement & to examine experimental methods that can sharpen this fuzziness. And theres this extra credit Q and it is as follows, if u have any suggestions i would be greatfull.

You get this credit for clever modifications of the original experiment that allow you to learn something new. You are essentially doing another experiment.

You need to do the following:
60. Come up with a testable hypothesis, not covered in future experiments.
61. Take measurements
Show sample calculations.
Do an error analysis.
Show the data analysis, complete with calculations and plots
62 Draw conclusions apart from the purpose of the assigned experiment.

Answer 1

Try varying things in the experiment, like the length of the pendulum or the weight. Change only one thing at the time.

Repeat the timings with exactly the same measuring rules. Plot the results as a function of the variable you change and try to deduce a general "pendulum rule".

Answer 2

If you have an "ideal" pendulum, the period should be a function of g (gravitational accel) and L (length of pendulum). This means that the mass at the end of the string shouldn't matter.

You measured the period in your experiment and should be able to back out the length of the pendulum, and it should agree reasonably well with the actual length.

However, there are two main causes of error in your experiment: non-ideality of the pendulum, and measurement error.

idea 1:
Hypothesis: (unsure how important it is)
The primary important parameter in having an experimental pendulum behave like a theoretical pendulum is the (pendulum mass)/(string mass).

Find the minimum mass ratio required for the pendulum experimental period to be within 10% of the predicted period (some arbitrary tolerance).

You could try string, a wire, and a hinged rod. Masses could range from cotton balls up to small gram masses from a balance. Friction may be a problem.

idea 2:
In your experiment you tried measuring the period by timing one swing and with timing multiple swings. I am guessing you used a stopwatch. You may have noticed that when you have to measure short times with a stopwatch, you are only certain of the time to +/- about a half-second or so. If you time multiple swings, (measure multiples of the period at a time), you are still only off by the same absolute error. Thus the relative error in the measured period goes down. Actually I guess this isn't really an idea. This is what your experiment was actually on. You could plot the error vs. the number of pendulum swings used to time the error. Having a value for the error requires you to define the "true period", which could be the theoretical period, or a period where you were pretty sure the measurement error is negligible (many oscillations), or some kind of good average of all the measurements.

Answer 3

Try taking more obsrvation and plot a simple graph and a log log graph.