Pendulum Lab Essay

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Pendulum Lab Hypothesis: To calculate the time it takes the pendulum to swing back and forth one time. Materials: String Small Weight Measuring Tape Clock or stopwatch Diagram: Procedure: 1. Start with a piece of string 120 cm long: 2. Tie the weight onto the string, fasten the string to something which will allow it to swing freely, adjust the string length so that it is 100 cm long. 3. Pull the weight back a few inches, let it go and time how long it takes to make 30 swings back and forth. 4. Divide the time by 30 in order to get the time for 1 swing. 5. Calculate the accepted value for T by using the formula below. (remember l should be in meters) 6. Shorten the string by to a length of 90 cm and repeat steps 2-5 7. On graph paper, plot a graph of T2 vs l. This graph should be a straight line (why?), so draw a line of best fit. 8. Calculate your average % error, and explain it in your conclusion. It should be very low for this lab! Also, does your % error get worse and worse as the lab progresses? Why? %Error= Calculated- Experimental X 100 Calculated 9. In your conclusion, answer the (why?) in procedure steps 7 & 8 Results: Length of string (cm) Time for 15 swings (s) Time for 1 swing (s) Accepted value of T (s) % error calculated (%) T2 (your value from column 3) 100 30.9 2.06 2.00 3.0 4.00 90 28.1 1.87 1.90 1.6 3.61 80 26.3 1.75 1.80 2.7 3.24 70 25.3 1.69 1.68 0.6 2.82 60 24.0 1.60 1.55 3.2 2.40 50 22.1 1.47 1.42 3.5 2.01 40 19.2 1.28 1.27 0.8 1.61 30 16.5 1.10 1.10 0.0 1.21 20 13.5 0.90 0.89 1.1 0.79 10 9.6 0.64 0.64 0.0

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