Simple Pendulum Experiment: Angular Approximation Revisited

Abstract

The acceleration of free fall should be realised by students as dependent on one’s location rather than as a constant in all locations. Thus, there is no one way of determining g in the laboratory. For ease of science teaching it is important to let students know that one may not need to use small angular displacement of the pendulum bob in order to obtain g to an accuracy of three significant figures, comparable to, for example, the universally acceptable value of g = 9.81 ms-2 in London. A simple mathematical derivation enabled the determination of g = 9.93 ms-2, which was 1.2 % higher than the universally accepted value.