Galileo, a famous inventor who lived about 400 years ago, came up with an idea similar to this for making a time measuring instrument. His idea came from watching a lamp swinging back and forth.
You will need:
- String
- Weights (any objects which you can tie to the string)
- A piece of wood about $1.5$m long
- A hook
- Stopwatch
What to do:
- Tie a weight onto the end of the piece of string.
- Make a loop at the other end of the string.
- Screw the hook into the piece of wood and balance the wood between the backs of two chairs.
- Put the loop of string over the hook.You have now made a pendulum and can begin to experiment to make a minute timer from it.Image
- Start the weight swinging and time how long it takes to make $20$ swings. Use a stopwatch for this.
- Find a way to make the pendulum swing $20$ times in $20$ seconds.
Experiment with different size weights.
Try different lengths of string.
Can you turn your pendulum into an accurate minute timer?