Estimation of the Value of Gravitational Acceleration g Based on Measurements from a Simple Pendulum - Book Report/Review Example

In our calculations, we computed the time for one oscillation (time for the 15 oscillation divided by 10) to be 0.383. We also estimated the gravitational acceleration to be The percent error was calculated to be 9.684%.Hundreds of years ago Galileo found that one could “slow down” the acceleration by not letting things fall straight down. Rather, he made them “fall” at an angle; in other words, he let them fall down an inclined plane. In this way, they didn’t cover as much distance in a given time interval and the change in speed was slower.

In our case, we used a pendulum to test this. A pendulum refers to a weight that is suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. It was Galileo who first studied that the time a pendulum takes to swing back and forth through small distances depends only on the length of the pendulum. The time of this too and fro motion called the period does not only depend on the mass of the pendulum or on the size of the arc through which it swings. Another important factor involved in the period of motion is the acceleration due to gravity (g), which on the earth is 9.8 ms-2. It then follows that a long pendulum has a greater period than a shorter pendulum.

When a pendulum is displaced from its resting position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will always accelerate it back towards its initial position. When it is released, the restoring force (force due to gravity) will cause it to oscillate about the equilibrium position, swinging back and forth.We further plotted a graph a graph of period squared against length to help us understand the relationship between the length and the period squared. Clearly, from the graph, we observe a positive linear relationship between the period squared and the length.

This means that as the length increases so does the period squared.