Computing the gravitational acceleration within the World Pendulum Alliance as an application of the remote laboratory methodology

Abstract

This paper describes a method for calculating gravitational acceleration using simple pendulums available through the World Pendulum Alliance. This network comprises fourteen institutions across eight countries, each providing a pendulum that can be accessed remotely via the Internet. We demonstrate how to measure the pendulum's period for N oscillations, discussing the importance of repetitions and samples in minimizing experimental uncertainty. We then use the averaged period value to compute the local gravitational acceleration, accounting for corrections due to the moment of inertia of the system. Finally, we analyze the geographical location of each pendulum to explore the dependence of gravity on latitude, longitude, and altitude and discuss its implications for the Earth's shape. We believe this tool will be useful for physics courses at the introductory and university levels due to its remote access features and its relevance to fundamental concepts.