THE UNIVERSITY OF DODOMA

COLLEGE OF NATURAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
COURSE NAME: PHYSICS PRACTICALS III.
COURSE CODE: PH 216
COURSE INSTRUCTOR: MR. KAMAZE, D.
EXPERIMENT NUMBER: EXPERIMENT 07
TITLE OF EXPERIMENT: The determination of acceleration due to gravity of the cardbord
DATE OF EXPERIMENT: 25/01/2021
SUBMISSION DATE: 01/02/2021;
STUDENT NAME: IDDY, AYOUB RAMADHANI;
REGISTRATION NUMBER: T/UDOM/2018/09211
DEGREE PROGRAME: BSC-EDUCATION.
YEAR OF STUDY: 3rd YEAR:

OTHER PARTICIPANT’S PARTICULAR

S/N NAME REG NUMBER SEX PROGRAMME
01 SHIJA, MANHE K T/UDOM/2018/13045 ME BSC-ED

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS PAGES

ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................03

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................0 4

THEORY...................................................................................................................05

METHODOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL PART................................................09

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS...................................................................................10

DATA ANALYSIS....................................................................................................11

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS....................................................................................15

CONCLUSSION..........................................................................................................16

REFFERENCES...........................................................................................................17

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 ABSTRACT
The aim of this experiment is to determine the acceleration due to gravity of a cardboard. The
experiment was involve stopwatch for measuring time during rotation also cardboard for
undergoing oscillation and a pin for fixing a cardboard into stationary point during oscillations,
the acceleration due to gravity of the experiment was obtained from the calculation by relating
different relation from the graph which is drawing as the graph of h2 against T2h .The obtained
acceleration due to gravity calculated was 11.01msec-2 and this experiment was succefully since
the value of acceleration due to gravity was obtained which is the same with the theoretical
value although there is a small parentage error 11.3% due to sources of error in this experiments
such as air resistance error due to misallocation of point and error due to starting and stopping
stop watch hence this sources of error cause these deviation even if the experiment was
carefully handled by so as to minimize the sources of error .

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 INTRODUCTION

Any rigid body suspended from a fixed support constitutes a physical (compound) pendulum. A
rigid body is one that is non-deformable when deforming force is applied on it that is the relative
locations of all particles of which the object is composed remain constant even when deforming
force is applied. A circular ring suspended on a nail in a wall, a heavy metallic rod suspended
through a hole in it and so on are examples of physical pendulum.

A compound pendulum is a rigid body swinging in a vertical plane about any horizontal axis
passing through a body. The present article give the result of an experimental investigation of
dependence of( T ) on ( h) for a particular compound pendulum Where by T is the time period
for a small oscillation of the pendulum h is the distance between the center of gravity and the
axis of rotation h

Moment of inertia of a rigid body is the sum of the products of the mass and the square of the
perpendicular distance to the axis of rotation of each particle in a body rotating about an axis.
Moment of inertia is a measure of the difficult in staring or stopping rotating of a rigid body
about an axis. Its denoted by symbol 𝐼 .

𝐼 = 𝑀𝐾²

Where 𝐾 is radius of gyration of a body about an axis of rotation which is defined as the radial
distance from the axis of rotation to which the whole mass of the body is concentrated without
altering the moment of inertia.

When a rigid body is set to oscillate through small angular displacement its time period is given
𝑘2+ℎ2
b 𝑇=√ gℎ
where ℎ is perpendicular distance from the axis of Centre of mass to the axis of
2
rotation then T2h = 4𝜋 (k2 + h2)
g

gT2h = 4𝜋2k2+ 4𝜋2 h2

4𝜋2 h2 = gT2h - 4𝜋2k2

2 g𝑇2ℎ
h = 4𝜋2 - k2
g
h2 = ( ) 𝑇2ℎ - k2
4𝜋2

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 THEORY OF EXPERIMENT

A physical pendulum: is any object whose oscillations are similar to those of the simple
pendulum, but cannot be modeled as point mass on the string and the mass distribution must be
included into the equation of motion. There is no requirement of string, as result, no tension
involved in this case, the two aspects are very important as shown below;

i. Gravity acts through center of mass of the rigid body. Hence, the length of pendulum
used is equal to linear distance between pivot and center of mass (h)
2
ii. The moment of inertia of the rigid body about point suspension is equal to 𝑀𝐿

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As for the simple pendulum, the restoring force of the physical pendulum is the force of gravity.
With the simple pendulum, the force of gravity acts on the center of the pendulum bob. In the
case of the physical pendulum, the force of gravity acts on the center of mass (CM) of an object.
The center of gravity of the object; is the point through which the total weight of the body can be
considered to act. The point the total mass of the body seems to act is the center of gravity. The
center of gravity of all bodies can be determined by balancing the body on a knife edge or by
suspension with a plumb line from several points. In most cases, the center of gravity of a body
lies in the body itself, but few cases such as the horse-shoe magnet, the retort stand, Bunsen
burner, wine glass and conical flask, the center of gravity lies outside. The object oscillates about
a point O. consider the figure.1 below;

G
When a physical pendulum is hanging from a point but is free to rotate, it rotates because of the
torque applied at the CM, produced by the component of the object‟s weight that acts tangent to
the motion of the CM. Taking the counterclockwise direction to be positive, the component of
the gravitational force that acts tangent to the motion is – mgsinθ. The minus sign is the result of
the restoring force acting in the opposite direction of the increasing.

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A rigid body (one that cannot be deformed) pivoted at O (called the “point of suspension”, as
shown in the above figure), or a compound pendulum, when displaced slightly executes simple
harmonic motion, with time period as shown below;

Where, I is the moment of inertia about an axis passing through the point of suspension (O), and
is the distance of the point of suspension from the center of gravity (CG).

Moment of inertia (I) is a quantity measuring the resistance offered by a body against its
rotational motion. It is always referred to with respect to an axis of rotation and it depends on the
body‟s shape. For a point mass m, the moment of inertia I is given by

𝐼 = 𝑚𝑟2....................................................................... ii

Where r 2 is the distance of the point mass from the axis of rotation.

In this experiment we consider a triangular card board of mass (shown in pendulum assembly),
which oscillates in its own plane. Its moment of inertia about an axis passing through its point of
suspension O is given by:

According to the parallel axis theorem

...............................................................................
I = IG + Mh2 iii

IG is the rotational inertia of the body about its center of mass and its given by

.....................................................................................
IG = Mk2 iv

Substituting equation 4 into equation iii

I = M(h2 + k2)….........................................................................v

Where K is radius of gyration substituting equation 5into equation 1

T = 2 ℎ2+𝑘2
𝜋√
gℎ

2
4𝜋
T2h = (k2 + h2)
g

gT2h = 4𝜋2k2+ 4𝜋2 h2

4𝜋2 h2 = gT2h - 4𝜋2k2

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 2 g𝑇2ℎ
h = 4𝜋2 - k2

2 g 2
h = (4𝜋 2) 𝑇2 ℎ -

For a simple pendulum with bob mass m and a massless thread of length h the moment of inertia
is I = Mh2. Using a known expression for the period of oscillation of simple pendulum is
obtained.

ℎ
T = 2𝜋√
g

A point S (shown in Figure 1), on the other side of the CG and at a distance from the CG
(along the line joining O and CG) is called the “point of oscillation”. The oscillations with the
point of suspension O are then equivalent to having all the mass concentrated at S.

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 METHODOLOGY

Apparatus used in these experiments are;

A retort stand was used to hold a system of a triangular board during experiment, a needle was
used to make a small hole to a triangular card board and as the axes of rotation, two small
wooden blocks were used to hold a needle in position, a digital stop watch was used to measure
the time in seconds for each 10 oscillations and a piece of cotton thread was used to suspend a
card board in position.

Procedures;

The Centre of gravity G of a small triangular sheet of card board was located by using a bob
suspended by a piece of cotton thread.

The triangular sheet of card board was made with holes at one apex ( angle ). Then, a needle was
inserted within a hole and then the card was suspended and allowed to settle undisturbed. The
bob was suspended using a piece of thread and then a mark was put at the point where the thread
cross cut the base of a triangular card board. This procedure was repeated at other two apices.
The lines were drawn joining each apex with the corresponding mark at the base. The point
where all three lines intersected was mark with a letter G, and was the point where the Centre of
gravity of a triangular card board was. The process appeared as from the figure below.

Figure 1.2

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A hole was made at 2cm from G of a line joining G and the farthest angle ( Apex ), other five
holes was made along that line 2cm from each other. The Apparatus was set as it appears in the
figure 1.3 below.

Figure 1.3 , the apparatus set up for the experiment

The pin was clamped tightly between the two pieces of wooden blocks at and then a
triangular card board was suspended by inserting a nearest to the Centre of gravity hole at
the pin. The distance h was recorded from the point G to the point of suspension and
then. Then a triangular card board was displaced with a small angle and then a stop watch
was switched to measure the time t for all 10 small complete oscillations. The same
procedure was repeated with other five values of h and the table of h, h2 t, T, T2, T2h was
filled with the values obtained

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 DATA COLLECTED

From the experiment procedures, the data were tabulated as in below.

ℎ(cm) ℎ2𝑐𝑚2 𝑡 sec 𝑇 sec 𝑇2𝑠𝑒𝑐2 𝑇2ℎ𝑠𝑒𝑐2𝑐𝑚

2 4 10.85 1.085 1.177 2.354
4 16 7.74 0.774 0.599 2.396
6 36 7.16 0.716 0.513 3.078
8 64 6.96 0.696 0.484 3.872
10 100 7.78 0.778 0.605 6.050
12 144 7.38 0.738 0.545 6.540

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 DATA ANALYSIS

The graph of h2 cm2 against T2h sec2cm was drawn and it appears in table 1 below.

The graph of h2(cm2) against t2h(sec2cm)

200

150

100

50
h2(c

0
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

-50

-100

-150
T2h(sec2cm)

Graph 1

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The slope from the graph is given by
2
∆ℎ
Slope (M) =
∆𝑇2ℎ

64−16
M = 3.872−2.396

M = 28.56cmsec-2

Therefore the slope of the graph is M = 28.56cmsec-2

From the equation of compound pendulum,

𝐼
T = 2𝜋
√𝑚gℎ

But I = IG + mh2

T=2 𝑚(𝑘2+ℎ2)
𝜋√ 𝑚gℎ

T=2 𝑘2+ℎ2
𝜋√
gℎ

2
T2 h = 4𝜋
(k2 + h2)
g

gT2h = 4𝜋2k2+ 4𝜋2 h2

4𝜋2 h2 = gT2h - 4𝜋2k2

2
g𝑇 ℎ
h2 = - k2
4𝜋2

2 g 2
h = (4𝜋 2) 𝑇2 ℎ -

When compared with the equation of a straight line

2 g
h = (4𝜋 2) 𝑇2 ℎ - k2 which is equivalent

y= M x - c

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 g
Slope (M) = 4𝜋2

g = Slope (M) 4𝜋2

g = 28.56 cmsec-2x 4𝜋2

g = 1128.4cmsec-2

g = 11.28msec-2

Therefore, the acceleration due to gravity is g = 11.28msec-2but y-intercept c = k2 also, k =

Radius of gyration of the triangular board

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 DISCUSSION
From the experimental result above the period of complete oscillation of a triangular was found
to decrease with increase in distance of suspension from its center of gravity to the top point of
hole but the triangular card board suspended through a fifth hole the time period started to
increase with increase in distance of suspension distance. From the analysis part the plotted
graph of square of distance of suspension from the center of gravity against the product of square
period and the suspension distance was found to obey linear graph equation hence it was straight
line with positive slope and negative y intercept . When a physical pendulum is hanging from a
point but is free to rotate, it rotates because of the torque applied at the CM, produced by the
component of the object‟s weight that acts tangent to the motion of the CM. Taking the
counterclockwise direction to be positive, the component of the gravitational force that acts
tangent to the motion is – mgsinθ. The minus sign is the result of the restoring force acting in the
opposite direction of the increasing From the slope of the graph obtained the acceleration due to
gravity was successfully hence the variation of experimental value with these calculated value
was very small with the percentage error of 11.02% the deviation which arise in these
experiment was either due sources of error which arise such as;
Sources of Errors

 Personal error due to delay in starting and stopping the stopwatch

 Error due to air resistance
 Error due to miscounting of oscillation
Precautions
 By recording a time several and finding an average.
 To ensure windows and doors are closed.
 To observe and counting carefully number of complete oscillation

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 CONCLUSION

From the result obtained from the graph show that the value of h increases as the period of
oscillation decreases until (h) become comparable with k when period passes through a
minimum then start to increases with h. By using the apparatus given are able to find the
acceleration due to gravity which is 11.02m/s with the percentage error of 11.3% even though
they deviate a little bit to the value which we have obtained in the theory part due to the
systematic errors like timing of stop watch , and error due to air resistance and error arise during
miscounting of the time during the experiment which lead to increase in period of oscillation
.The nature of graph is straight line which does not pass through the original it cut a negative y –
intercept A compound pendulum is a rigid body swinging in a vertical plane about any
horizontal axis passing through a body. The present article give the result of an experimental
investigation of dependence of( T ) on ( h) for a particular compound pendulum Where by T
is the time period for a small oscillation of the pendulum h is the distance between the center of
gravity and the axis of rotation h

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 REFERENCES

Theory of Heat‟ – Maxwell, James Clerk – page 57-67 – Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press –
1970

Talks about conservation of heat, the form and function of calorimeters, Method of Mixture

„The Edinburgh Encyclopedia Conducted by David Brewster‟, with the assistance of

gentlemen eminent in science and literature the first American edition – Published by Joseph
and Edward Parker in 1832 – page 294:

This is a discussion of Dr Joseph Black‟s and Dr William Irvine groundbreaking discovery of

specific heat capacity.

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