A pendulum consists of a point-mass object of mass suspended from a pivot by a massless string of length . The pendulum is swinging freely in the vertical plane. By what factor does the amplitude of oscillation change if the string is very slowly shortened by a factor of ?
Details and assumptions
The amplitude of oscillation is very small.
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The average tension of the string (with m as the mass of the object, L as the length of the pendulum, g as the gravitational constant and θ o as the angular amplitude of oscillation) is:
T = m g cos θ + m L θ ˙ 2 = m g ( 1 − θ 2 ) + m L θ ˙ 2 = m g ( 1 + 4 θ o 2 )
Use that θ ( t ) = θ o cos ( l g t + ϕ ) . The oscillation energy and potential energy is E = − m g L cos θ o ≈ − m g L ( 1 − 2 θ o 2 ) , and we balance the work done by shorten the pendulum length with the change in the oscillation energy to get:
d E = − m g d L + 2 1 m g θ o 2 d L + m g L θ o d θ o = d A = − T d L = − m g ( 1 + 4 θ o 2 ) d L ⇒ L d θ o = − 4 3 θ o d L
⇒ θ o ∼ L − 3 / 4
So the change in the amplitude must be k 3 / 4 = 1 . 6 8