Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A pendulum is a body suspended from a fixed support such that it freely swings back and forth under the influence of gravity. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back towards the equilibrium position.
Huygens also solved the problem of how to calculate the period of an arbitrarily shaped pendulum (called a compound pendulum), discovering the center of oscillation, and its interchangeability with the pivot point. [55] The existing clock movement, the verge escapement, made pendulums swing in very wide arcs of about 100°. [56]
The Foucault pendulum or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault, conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. If a long and heavy pendulum suspended from the high roof above a circular area is monitored over an extended period of time, its plane of oscillation appears to change ...
The moment of inertia of a compound pendulum constructed from a thin disc mounted at the end of a thin rod that oscillates around a pivot at the other end of the rod, begins with the calculation of the moment of inertia of the thin rod and thin disc about their respective centers of mass.
Homebrew Cavendish experiment, showing calculation of results and precautions necessary to eliminate wind and electrostatic errors. "Big 'G'", Physics Central, retrieved Dec. 8, 2013. Experiment at Univ. of Washington to measure the gravitational constant using variation of Cavendish method. Eöt-Wash Group, Univ. of Washington.
The seconds pendulum (also called the Royal pendulum), 0.994 m (39.1 in) long, in which each swing takes one second, became widely used in quality clocks. The long narrow clocks built around these pendulums, first made by William Clement around 1680, became known as grandfather clocks. The increased accuracy resulting from these developments ...
For example, an experimental uncertainty analysis of an undergraduate physics lab experiment in which a pendulum can estimate the value of the local gravitational acceleration constant g. The relevant equation [1] for an idealized simple pendulum is, approximately,
A green ballistic pendulum Animation of a ballistic pendulum. A ballistic pendulum is a device for measuring a bullet's momentum, from which it is possible to calculate the velocity and kinetic energy. Ballistic pendulums have been largely rendered obsolete by modern chronographs, which allow direct measurement of the projectile velocity.