.LABORATORY EXERCISE 1.

1
DETERMINING THE FREE FALL ACCELERATION USING A MATHEMATICAL
PENDULUM

Objective of work: 1) to calculate the free fall acceleration by the time period of a
mathematical pendulum; 2) to learn the methodic of mathematical processing of the results of
direct and indirect measurements; 3) to learn the laws of harmonic oscillatory motion.
Equipment and components: a heavy ball suspended on a lightweight non-stretchable
thread; vertical level of measurement; a precision stopwatch.
Free fall is the motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it, and the
acceleration, which the body acquires, is the acceleration g .
In this laboratory work the acceleration of free fall
is calculated by a pendulum. Pendulum is the material
point suspended on a thin weightless non-stretchable
thread. This material point does the oscillations in a
vertical plane upon the action of the gravitational force.
In practice pendulum is any heavy body suspended
on a light undeformed thread. The length of this thread
must be several times larger than the body sizes.
On the picture #1 we can see that the force which
α turns the pendulum towards the equilibrium position, at
the low deviation angles  equals

F  mg sin   mg , (1)

α where sin    (when we measure the angle with
radians).
Thereby, the force F is proportional to the deviation
(from the equilibrium position) angle of a pendulum.
Therefore, it is proportional to the shifting of a pendulum
from this state. This force causes the harmonic oscillatory
Рис. 1 motion.
The time period of a pendulum Т depends on the
length of a pendulum l і and the acceleration of free fall:

T  2 l . (2)
g
Calculating (2) relatively to g , we have:

2
g  4 2 l (3)
T
It follows from this that calculating of the acceleration of free fall boils down to the measuring of
the length of the pendulum and calculating of its time period.

Procedures
1. Choose the longest thread length of a pendulum and find the value l. Measure the distance
between the point of suspension and the center of mass of suspended body to do it.
 2. Displace the pendulum from the equilibrium position (5-10o), determine the time
period it takes to do N = 50 complete oscillations. Take a measurement more than 3 times.
3. Process the results of measurements of values l and t.
t 
4. Calculate the average value T  by using the formula T   and average value
N
g by using the formula (3).
5.Calculate the relative errors of results of direct and indirect measurements:
 T   t and  g  2    l  2 T .
6. Calculate the confidence interval of total error  g   g   g
7. Issue the report and write down the results into the table.

№ Tabular Results of direct Results of indirect

values measurements measurements
 l, m t, s T, s g, m/s2
С - -
1
2
3
<x>
Δc
O

Δ

Control questions

1. Formulate the Law of universal gravitation. Explain the difference between weight and
gravity.
2.Write down the dependence of the acceleration of free fall on altitude above the Earth
surface and the latitude.
3.Write down the pendulum time period formula. How changes the time period of a
pendulum if we will lift the pendulum above the Earth surface?
4. Write down the differential equation of harmonic oscillations and its solution. Explain the
definition of the term “shift”, "amplitude", "initial phase", "period", "frequency". On what values
depends the total energy in harmonic motion?