The Pendulum Essay

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Pendulum Investigation: Investigating Newton’s 2nd (and 3rd) Law of Planetary Motion Introduction: In this activity, a simple pendulum will be used to show Kepler’s 2nd (& 3rd) Law of Planetary Motion. A simple pendulum is a string with a constant length that is attached to a weight. One single swing of the pendulum from point A to point C and back to point A is called a period. During this investigation, you will observe how several variables affect the period of a single pendulum swing. Essential Questions: * How will the mass of an object affect the period of a single pendulum swing? * How will the length of the string affect the period of a single pendulum swing? Materials Needed: * String * Set of weights * Weight “bucket” * Tape * Stopwatch (or iPad) * Protractor Hypotheses: In your notebook make 2 hypotheses: 1. How do you think weight will affect the period of a pendulum? 2. How you think the length of the string will affect the period of a pendulum? Procedure: Task #1: Period vs. Mass 1. Cut a 75cm piece of string. 2. On one end, attach the “weight bucket” 3. Tape the other end to the top of your table so that it is 65cm of string from the table to the part attached to the top of the “weight bucket”. (See the image on front for the set-up) 4. Place a 10g weight in the “weight bucket”. 5. Pull the string to a 20O angle on the protractor. 6. Using a stopwatch, carefully time 1 period (from A to C to A on the image on front). 7. Do this 3 times for the 10g weight. 8. Repeat the same procedures (5 – 7) with 4 different weights (5 total). 9. Record ALL results in your notebook. Task #2: Period vs. Length 1. Do the same procedure as above, except do NOT change the weight. Instead, choose 5 different lengths of string. Be

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