An analog simulation experiment to study free oscillations of a damped simple pendulum

Abstract

The characteristics of drive-free oscillations of a damped simple pendulum under sinusoidal potential force field differ from those of the damped harmonic oscillations. The frequency of oscillation of a large amplitude simple pendulum decreases with increasing amplitude. Many prototype mechanical simple pendulum have been fabricated with precision and studied earlier in view of introducing them in undergraduate physics laboratories. However, fabrication and maintenance of such mechanical pendulum require special skill. In this work, we set up an analog electronic simulation experiment to serve the purpose of studying the force-free oscillations of a damped simple pendulum. We present the details of the setup and some typical results of our experiment. The experiment is simple enough to implement in undergraduate physics laboratories.