Investigating damped oscillations in simple pendulum

Abstract

Abstract We describe an experimental set-up of a simple pendulum for the measurement of damping coefficient of oscillations. We have used an Arduino microcontroller with infrared sensor interface to detect the oscillating object in its path. The Arduino program records the instants of time to calculate the time-period and the total number of oscillations. The dependence of damping coefficient on the size, shape and mass of the pendulum bob as well as on the thickness of the pendulum string is investigated.