Investigating factors affecting the swing of a pendulum.

Target To perform a science investigation

and to learn how to write up the investigation report

Plan: what I could change The length of the pendulum The length of the pendulum swing The mass of the pendulum

What I could measure How long it takes for the pendulum

to complete one swing. The mass of the pendulum. The distance the pendulum swings.

What I will change The length of the pendulum.

What I will measure How long it takes for the pendulum

to complete 10 swings.

Keep the same The mass of the pendulum.

Prediction Add your own prediction here – it

could be- The longer the pendulum the

(longer / shorter) the time for one complete swing.

Reason for prediction Add you own ideas here…..

Plan – set up a pendulum and measure the length of the string. Time 10 swings and work out the time for one swing. Change the length and repeat the experiment.

Retort stand

Funnel

Beaker

Stop clock or watch

Pendulum results

Length of pendulum Time for 10 swings Time for 1 swing

     

     

     

     

Analysis In this section you have to say

what you have found out from your results – give detailed explanations and try to give reasons why things happened.

What the graph shows The graph for my experiment

showed the length of the pendulum plotted against the time for one swing.

Explaining the change

Evaluation In this section you have to say how

good (or bad) your investigation was – also suggest how reliable your results are and ways of improving or extending the investigation

Prediction My prediction was (correct /

incorrect) the reason for this was

Unusual or unexpected readings

Reasons for unexpected results The reason why the unexpected

result was measured was

Reliable or unreliable The results appear to be

Extending the investigation I could extend this investigation by

taking more readings at a a wider range of temperatures.

I could also try to use different types of funnels with different width gaps at the bottom.