Two Coupled Pendulums

Syed Bilal Hyder

April 25, 2021

 Abstract

Pendulums have been an object of extreme interest in physics experiments, especially

when it comes to demonstration of oscillations. In this experiment, we will construct
and investigate a system with two pendulums attached to each other with a string.
We will find it’s normal modes and see if these modes and their time periods are
consistent with the theoretical predictions.
Introduction

A simple pendulum oscillates with some frequency ω, and if we do not disturb the
system, it will keep on oscillating with this frequency. However, if we couple two
of these pendulums together, the system becomes much more complicated. The
system will not show a periodic trend, and will not have a definite frequency ω for
all the cases. Only by specifying some parameters, we can see the system having
some periodic motion with some frequency ωN . This frequency is knows as the
normal frequency. Periodic motion corresponding to one of these normal frequencies
is knows as a normal mode. The system setup in this experiment will also have some
normal modes with which it will have a periodic motion. The goal of this experiment
is to understand the motion of this system and see if the predicted normal modes
can be obtained with the experimental data.

Nomenclature and experimental setup

t Tension in d
t1 Tension in d1
t2 Tension in d2
T1 Tension in L1
T2 Tension in L2

1
 lx

lz

d
L

P
D
d1 P`

P1 d2
P2
L1 d
L2

Figure 1: Experimental setup

The experiment was setup as shown in the illustrations above. I light, inexten-
sible string was used to for this experiment. Various dimensions that are of use for
this experiment are also shown in the figure and tensions. The ends of the strings
were fixed using tapes to minimize any energy losses and effects of damping. Pivot
points of the two pendulums were attached to this string and were not fixed as the
distance d needs to be varied for this experiment.

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Theory

The two pendulums are coupled in a very peculiar way. Pivot points of the two
pendulums are attached to a combined string. Due to which, if one of the pendulums
move, it causes tension in the string a transfers energy to the other pendulum. If
moved individually, the two pendulums would move as simple harmonic oscillators,
but combined, the motion changes. Only under some specific conditions, the system
undergoes harmonic oscillations.

To analyze the motion of this system, we setup it’s equations of motion and find
the modes of oscillation of the system. We chose points p1 and p2 as our points of
interest to analyze this motion. Forces acting on these points are

T1 L⃗1 + td⃗ − t1 d⃗1 = 0

and

T2 L⃗2 − td⃗ + t2 d⃗2 = 0

In these equations, the vectors represent the forces parallel or antiparallel to the
length vectors and the tensions are also proportional to the lengths of the strings.
This is an approximation just like th small angle approximation used in the pendu-
lum motion. Point P shown in the figure is chosen as the reference point (origin).

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Displacement vectors for the two bobs according to this origin will be d⃗1 + L⃗1 and
D⃗ − d⃗2 + L⃗2 respectively. D
⃗ is fixed and will vo vary in any condition so acceleration
¨ ¨ ¨ ¨
for the two bobs will be d⃗1 + L⃗1 and −d⃗2 + L⃗2 . So the equations of motion for the
two pendulums can be found as

¨ ¨
m⃗g − T1 L⃗1 = m(d⃗1 + L⃗1 )

and
¨ ¨
m⃗g − T2 L⃗2 = m(−d⃗2 + L⃗2 )

The pendulums move in the y-direction so adding the two equations and taking
the y component gives the first mode of oscillation as Q1 = L⃗1y + L⃗2y corresponding
to frequency ω1 . Similarly, by taking the y component of the subtraction of two
equations, gives the second mode as Q2 = L⃗1y − L⃗2y corresponding to frequency ω2 . y
direction is the direction perpendicular to the plane of page, and these equations show
that the system will undergo simple harmonic motion if either the two pendulums
move in the same direction or in the opposite direction to one another. Motion of
pendulums in the y direction can be for the two modes can be represented using
cosine functions as shown in the graphs below. It can be noted that in the first
mode, the pendulums are in phase and in the second mode, they are out of phase by
180◦ .

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 y
Mode 1

y
Mode 2

Figure 2: Modes of the system

However, when only one of the pendulums is given some oscillation, the resulting
motion is the average of these two modes, and the resulting motion will be represented
by the average of two cosine functions. The slight difference in the two frequencies
will cause an exquisite effect and the two cosines will not simply overlap. Instead,
one will slowly reduce the amplitude of the other until one of the pendulums stop.
Then this process will proceed in reverse and the other pendulum will start losing
amplitude until it stops, transferring all of it’s energy back to the first pendulums.
It can be demonstrated by simply taking the average of two cosines with different
frequencies, and plotting it using a software.
y
Tp

Figure 3: Mixed oscillation for one of the pendulums

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 Time Tp is the time for one oscillation while the pendulums are moving and T
is the time it takes for the pendulums to interchange energy from one to the other.
These two time periods are related to one another my the formula

T 1
= (1)
Tp x

where x is called the coupling constant. x can also be found using some of the
measured lengths from the apparatus.

!
1 L d
 
= 1+ 1+ (2)
x lz 2lx

Results

In this experiment, the length of string of each pendulum L was set to 28.5 cm1 ,
and the distance d, between the pivot points of the two pendulums was varied.
lz , lx , Tp , T, T1 and T2 were recording for each setting. Two values for x were calcu-
lated, one using T and Tp (xp ), and the other one using lx , lz , and L (xl ).
1
All lengths measured here are with an uncertainty of ±0.3 cm

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 d/cm lx /cm lz /cm T1 /s T2 /s T /s Tp /s

10.0 41.0 20.0 1.419 1.155 3.234 1.287

20.0 36.5 18.0 1.419 1.221 4.257 1.332

30.0 32.0 16.0 1.386 1.221 5.247 1.332

40.0 27.0 15.5 1.386 1.254 6.897 1.332

50.0 22.5 13.5 1.332 1.254 9.471 1.332

All the values of length were measured using a tape measure (uncertainty 0.3
cm). Video was recorded at 30 fps (0.03 s) and to measure the time period, Tracker
was used. Values of xl and xp were then calculated along with their uncertainties.

xp xl % diff

0.398 ± 0.014 0.368 ± 0.026 7.5

0.313 ± 0.010 0.304 ± 0.018 2.9

0.254 ± 0.008 0.245 ± 0.014 3.5

0.193 ± 0.006 0.202 ± 0.012 4.5

0.141 ± 0.004 0.152 ± 0.010 7.2

A graph of xl against xp was then plotted.

Discussion and conclusion

Experimental data shows that our experiment fits closely with the theoretical pre-
dictions. The two modes were visible and mode mixing also took place. The graph
for coupling constants shows a linear relation between experimental values and all

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 x p vs xl
0.4

0.3

Values of x l
0.2

0.1

0
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
Values of x p

Figure 4: Actual image of the controller used

the points lie near the line of best fit. Only 5% average difference between the two
values of coupling constants further strengthens the relation between theoretical pre-
diction and experimental data. The uncertainties in our experimental data can be
if reduced by using better equipment. The setup was very delicate and even a small
touch would et it in motion and using a tape measure made it difficult to measure the
lengths and the uncertainty was high. A meter rule could have made the calculations
much more reliable. On the other hand, a high speed camera could have reduced the
uncertainty in time.

Resources

Moloney, Michael J. ”String-coupled pendulum oscillators: Theory and experiment.” Amer-

ican Journal of Physics 46.12 (1978): 1245-1246.

Coupled Oscillators. (2021, March 1). Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://phys.libretexts.org/@g