How does the length of a paper clip pendulum affect its period of oscillation?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The simple pendulum:
A pendulum is an example of a vibration with a regular, consistent motion. A simple pendulum is one which can be considered to be a point mass suspended from a string or rod of negligible mass. It is a resonant system with single resonant frequency. For small amplitues, the period of such a pendulum can be approximated by:
Where, L – length of pendulum, T – time period, and g – local accelaration due to gravity.
Below is a diagram of a simple pendulum:
The period of a simple gravity pendulum depends on its length, the local strength of gravity and on the amplitude (the maximum angle that the pendulum swings away from vertical, θ0).
HYPOTHESIS:
I hypothesize that as the number of chains in the clip increases, the time period of an oscillation also increases and vice versa.
The period of oscillation of a pendulum represents the time taken to complete one oscillation. When the length of the pendulum, or in this case of experiment, the number of paper clips increase in the paper clip chain, the time period for one oscillation also increases, given the angle of swing is kept constant. This is because more the length, more will be the distance required to travel, and thus, the time period of one oscillation increases.
Moreover, the equation tells us that when the length of the pendulum is increased (L), the time period for one oscillation (T) also increases.
HYPOTHETICAL GRAPH:
The hypthetical graph below represents a linear regression for an estimate of how I assume the results will somewhat look like. The time period for one oscillation increases as the number of clips in the chain increase. This graph shows almost a linear trend in the increase of time period as the number of paper clips increase.
VARIABLES:
Type
Manipulation
Independent Variable
Number of paper clips in the