Academic Writing 2019 S1

Bruno Santiago Mendoza Flores

Methodology
For the research’s preparation, a metal ball, a pendulum base, a chronometer and a
string were required. In this case, the way the gravitational acceleration was measured, was
using a pendulum constructed as shown on Fig. 1. The procedure of experimentation was
divided in two parts. The first experiment consisted of setting the string’s length to 0.935 [m].
Then, 20 periods of time, in which the pendulum completed a cycle, were measured; this
process was repeated 6 times. For the second experiment, the length of the string changed by
1, 0.8, 0.6, 0.5, 0.3, 0.2 [m] respectively. The period of time measured was of 10 seconds for
each trial. Finally, using equation (1), the gravitational acceleration was calculated analytically
based on the data obtained from both experiments. For analysis purposes, the standard
deviation was calculated for both experiments using the equation (2); N is the number of trials,
x is the value of the gravitational acceleration and 𝑥̅ is the average value of the gravitational
acceleration. The purpose of using the standard deviation was to understand how spread out
the data set is in both experiments and get an analytical visualization of how different the
gravitational acceleration was obtained throughout the tests.

Fig 1. Pendulum diagram.

l
𝑇 = 2𝜋√𝑔 … (1)
1
𝜎 = √𝑁−1 ∑𝑁
𝐼=1(𝑥𝑖 − 𝑥̅𝑖 ) … (2)
2

Results
The results obtained from both experiments are shown on Tables 1 and 2 respectively,
including the gravitational acceleration obtained analytically with the equation (1).
 Table 1. Data obtained from Experiment 1
Test Oscillations, N Total time, t[s] T[s] L[m] g[m/s2]
1 20 38.4 1.92 0.935 10.01
2 20 38.8 1.94 0.935 9.81
3 20 39.2 1.96 0.935 9.61
4 20 39 1.95 0.935 9.71
5 20 38.8 1.94 0.935 9.81
6 20 38.6 1.93 0.935 9.91
=1.4457

Table 2. Data obtained from Experiment 2

Test Oscillations, N Total time, t[s] T[s] L[m] g[m/s2]
1 20 20.11 2.011 1 9.76
2 20 17.89 1.789 0.8 9.87
3 20 15.78 1.578 0.6 9.51
4 20 14.21 1.421 0.5 9.78
5 20 10.97 1.097 0.3 9.84
6 20 8.93 0.893 0.2 9.91
=1.4334

For a better representation of the data, a chart is included for both sets of data as shown in Fig.
2 and Fig. 3.

10.05

10

9.95

9.9
Gravity [m/s^2]

9.85

9.8

9.75

9.7

9.65

9.6

9.55
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Test

Fig. 2. Variation of Gravity's Measure when L is constant.

 9.95
9.9
9.85
9.8
Gravity [m/s^2]

9.75
9.7
9.65
9.6
9.55
9.5
9.45
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Length of the Rope [m]

Fig. 3. Variation of Gravity's Measure when L is not Constant

As observed from the Tables 1 & 2 and Figures 2 & 3, the variation of the gravitational
acceleration differs almost on every test while the length of the string is either constant or
variable. The lowest value obtained in both experiments is 9.51 [m/s2] while the biggest value
is 10.01 [m/s2]. The standard deviation in both experiments is similar, as the data variation is
something they have in common.