We show that the treatment of pendulum movement, other than the linear approximation, may be an instructive experimentally based introduction to the physics of non-linear effects. Firstly the natural frequency of a gravitational pendulum is measured as function of its amplitude. Secondly forced oscillations of a gravitational pendulum are investigated experimentally without limiting amplitudes. By this arrangement new phenomena, the bistability and the jump-effect, can be observed. In the case of bistability the driven gravitational pendulum can oscillate in two different stable modes. Either it oscillates with a small amplitude and approximately in phase with the exciting torque or it oscillates with a larger amplitude and approximately anti-phase. The jump effect is the spontaneous transition from one mode of oscillation to the other. Both effects can be demonstrated and explained. © 2005 Springer.
CITATION STYLE
Weltner, K., Esperidião, A. S. C., Andrade, R. F. S., & Miranda, P. (2005). Introduction to the treatment of non-linear effects using a gravitational pendulum. In The Pendulum: Scientific, Historical, Philosophical and Educational Perspectives (pp. 49–66). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3526-8_4
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