Pendulum Periods Lab Conclusion

            Luckily, thanks to this lab, my partners and I were able to see how the length and mass of the parts of a pendulum would make it swing differently. By using different length of string and putting more weight on the bob, we were able to conclude that the period of the swing depended greatly on the length of the string, but not necessarily on the mass of the bob. This fact can be seen on my Data Table – Part II and Part III. It can also be seen in Graph 2, which depicts the length change, and Graph 3, which depicts the mass change. If we look back at the Data Table – Part II, you can see a noticeable decrease in period as the length is also decreased. In Data Table – Part III, you can see that the average period is somewhat around the same number for the three different masses. In the Analysis questions, it explained to us that using Newton’s laws, the period is related to the length and free-fall acceleration by the formula:. Besides having that equation to reference to, we didn’t have any formulas to work out ourselves. But this formula and Newton’s law is what brings Physics into the lab. All in all this lab went pretty alright. The one thing I would’ve done differently if I could was that I would have made Graph 3 more proportional looking to what it really is. Because there really isn’t a huge amount of change in the values, but the way the Zoom Fit worked, the values looked completely polar from each other. But hey, that just proves human error, right?