STEM Smart Physics

Task 2: Pendulum

Topic

The pupils are to build a pendulum and examine its characteristics. The primary objective is to discover the dependence between frequency and pendulum length and the independence between frequency and pendulum mass. A hypothesis is set up first and then either rejected or confirmed. 

The tasks increase in difficulty. In task 2, the correlation between pendulum length (resp. mass) and period is simply examined. In task 3, the equation is to be confirmed and the value for gravity acceleration compared with the published value. 

 
 

 

Learning objectives 

The pupils 

  • can name the physical characteristics of a pendulum (period, pendulum length, mass of the pendulum body)   
  • examine the correlation between frequency and mass.  
  • examine the correlation between frequency and pendulum length. 
  • record the oscillation as an experiment.   
  • calculate and compare the results with the given equations. 

Time required 

About 15 minutes are needed to build the pendulum. 
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​The subsequent processing of the tasks can be done in 30 to 75 minutes. Task 2 can be solved in 20 minutes. In this case, the processing time is mainly determined by the number of different lengths and masses. If the results are to be quantified and the equation confirmed, a further 20 minutes have to be planned. 

 

 

 

 

Didactic material

sc10-cd-2