07/10/2015

Wednesday
Lab partner: Simon

Lab 9: Torsion pendulum

Aim:
To investigate a torsion pendulum and learn about damped and driven harmonic
motion and resonance by finding:

The resonant frequency of the system

The phase difference between the driver and oscillator as a function of
frequency near resonance.
The quality factor, .
The damping factor for the torsion pendulum.

Method:
We removed the driver motor and manually moved the switch back and forwards
to stimulate the resonance frequency. We then let the pendulum swing freen to
find the out the natural frequency
We found that the pendulum disk lagged behind the movements of the motor.
We found that the resonance frequency was 0.29Hz

Figure 1: Manuel resonance frequency

Figure 2: Natural frequency

We hooked up the torsion pendulum to the driver motor to regulate the

frequency and then fiddled around with the frequency to try and find the
resonant frequency. Here are two attempts:

Figure 3: Finding resonant frequency attempt 1

Figure 4: Finding resonant frequency attempt 2

Dependence of Amplitude on Inpute Frequency

350
300
250
200

Amplitude (mV)

150
100
50
0
0.25

0.27

0.29

0.31

0.33

0.35

0.37

0.39

Input Frequency (Hz)

Graph 1: Amplitude vs. Input frequency

Dependence of Phase Shift on Input Frequency

1.6
1.4
1.2
1

Phase SHift (Radians) 0.8

0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0.25

0.27

0.29

0.31

0.33

0.35

0.37

0.39

Input Frequency (Hz)

Graph 1: Phase Shift vs. Input frequency

These two graphs displayed expected results for amplitude vs. input frequency
and phase shift vs. input frequency. However, it appears that we underestimated
our uncertainties for the amplitude as our error bars are much too small

In order to find Q observe the annotated version of graph 1:

Comparing the amplitude of graph 1 (325mV) and the resonance frequency of

figure 1 (0.29Hz) is not possible for this experiment due to technical difficulties
that were experienced (change of disk which would involve too much error for a
comparison).

0, and delta are all independent of the mass of the disk such that there
would be no change to these values if the mass of the disk changed, provided
that the motor would be able to rotate the disk at the same rate. A stiffer wire or
having more friction would produce a greater f0 such that the functional form of
would ensure that it increases whereas delta would be reduced.