- #1
J.Sterling47
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Homework Statement
Hey guys, so I'm doing the an exercise on the Kater's pendulum, to calculate g. I've gotten down my g calculation to g = 9.80658m +/- 0.00054 using equation 1 below. The errors taken into account are just on the kater period T and the distance between the two pivot points (L) using a vernier scale. However I need to take into account a few more sources of error from the following list:
Finite amplitude/width of pendulum
Buoyancy of air
Damping due to friction
Imperfect knife edges
Temperature variations during measurement
Elastic variations of pendulum length
Flexibility of pendulum
Altitude of measurements
So I'm expected to give a qualitative and quantitative explanation on how these could affect my calculation. I could not due these experimentally due to the time constraint and lack of equipment (except altitude), but somehow I'm still supposed to estimate how these variables will affect my calculation quantitatively. Some of these are negligible, but for the ones that aren't, how can I go about estimating the errors?
Homework Equations
1.) g = (2π)2(L/T2)
Actually this was the only equation given.
The Attempt at a Solution
I tried looking up the actual experiment done by Kater. According to the wiki page Kater made corrections for temperature, finite width, atmospheric pressure and altitude, but I couldn't find the methods he used. Either way, since I can't do these myself, I don't know where to start.