A simple simulation of a simple pendulum . . .


revOnlin -> User Spaces -> RogerG or Education.


Cheers, Roger


Roger,

Nice job! Good interface.

If you have the inclination, you might want to tackle the large amplitude pendulum. There is no nice analytic solution but you could numerically integrate the equation of motion. Something like this:

Let A represent the angle. Then you  would do a numerical integration with

repeat loop
  set the location of the pendulum to R,A --using radial coordinates
add c * sine(A) to the angular velocity -- where c depends on the mass, L and g --The angular acceleration is proportional to the torque which is proportional to sine(A)
  --For small amplitudes sine(A) = A, in radial coordinates
  add the angular velocity to A
end repeat loop

Where I have assumed the time interval between loops is one second, so that dt =1

It would be interesting to show how the period (determined by the number of loops between changes in sign of the angular velocity) depends on the amplitude. Show that the clock slows down as it runs down, i.e. the period decreases with decreasing amplitude--albeit slowly; it is a second order effect in the amplitude. That's why pendulum clocks work so well.

Jim


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