How small is small ie small approximation of up to which angle of physical pendulum in calculating time period?

A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. 1 When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position. When released, the restoring force combined with the pendulum's mass causes it to oscillate about the equilibrium position, swinging back and forth.

The time for one complete cycle, a left swing and a right swing, is called the period. A pendulum swings with a specific period which depends (mainly) on its length. From its discovery around 1602 by Galileo Galilei the regular motion of pendulums was used for timekeeping, and was the world's most accurate timekeeping technology until the 1930s.

2 Pendulums are used to regulate pendulum clocks, and are used in scientific instruments such as accelerometers and seismometers. Historically they were used as gravimeters to measure the acceleration of gravity in geophysical surveys, and even as a standard of length. The word 'pendulum' is new Latin, from the Latin pendulus, meaning 'hanging'.

The simple gravity pendulum4 is an idealized mathematical model of a pendulum. 567 This is a weight (or bob) on the end of a massless cord suspended from a pivot, without friction. When given an initial push, it will swing back and forth at a constant amplitude.

Real pendulums are subject to friction and air drag, so the amplitude of their swings declines. The period of swing of a simple gravity pendulum depends on its length, the local strength of gravity, and to a small extent on the maximum angle that the pendulum swings away from vertical,?0, called the amplitude. 8 It is independent of the mass of the bob.

Where L is the length of the pendulum and g is the local acceleration of gravity. For small swings the period of swing is approximately the same for different size swings: that is, the period is independent of amplitude. This property, called isochronism, is the reason pendulums are so useful for timekeeping.

10 Successive swings of the pendulum, even if changing in amplitude, take the same amount of time. For larger amplitudes, the period increases gradually with amplitude so it is longer than given by equation (1). For example, at an amplitude of?0 = 23° it is 1% larger than given by (1).

The period increases asymptotically (to infinity) as?0 approaches 180°, because the value?0 = 180° is an unstable equilibrium point for the pendulum. The difference between this true period and the period for small swings (1) above is called the circular error. In the case of a longcase clock whose pendulum is about one metre in length and whose amplitude is ±0.1 radians, the?2 term adds a correction to equation (1) that is equivalent to 54 seconds per day and the?4 term a correction equivalent to a further 0.03 seconds per day.

For real pendulums, corrections to the period may be needed to take into account the presence of air, the mass of the string, the size and shape of the bob and how it is attached to the string, flexibility and stretching of the string, motion of the support, and local gravitational gradients. The length L of the ideal simple pendulum above, used for calculating the period, is the distance from the pivot point to the center of mass of the bob. A pendulum consisting of any swinging rigid body, which is free to rotate about a fixed horizontal axis is called a compound pendulum or physical pendulum.

For these pendulums the appropriate equivalent length is the distance from the pivot point to a point in the pendulum called the center of oscillation. 16 This is located under the center of mass, at a distance called the radius of gyration, that depends on the mass distribution along the pendulum. However, for any pendulum in which most of the mass is concentrated in the bob, the center of oscillation is close to the center of mass.

Where I is the moment of inertia of the pendulum about the pivot point, m is the mass of the pendulum, and R is the distance between the pivot point and the center of mass of the pendulum. For example, for a pendulum made of a rigid uniform rod of length L pivoted at its end, I = (1/3)mL2. The center of mass is located in the center of the rod, so R = L/2.

Substituting these values into the above equation gives T = 2?2L/3g. This shows that a rigid rod pendulum has the same period as a simple pendulum of 2/3 its length. Christiaan Huygens proved in 1673 that the pivot point and the center of oscillation are interchangeable.

19 This means if any pendulum is turned upside down and swung from a pivot located at its previous center of oscillation, it will have the same period as before, and the new center of oscillation will be at the old pivot point. In 1817 Henry Kater used this idea to produce a type of reversible pendulum, now known as a Kater pendulum, for improved measurements of the acceleration due to gravity. One of the earliest known uses of a pendulum was in the 1st.

Century seismometer device of Han Dynasty Chinese scientist Zhang Heng. 20 Its function was to sway and activate one of a series of levers after being disturbed by the tremor of an earthquake far away. 21 Released by a lever, a small ball would fall out of the urn-shaped device into one of eight metal toad's mouths below, at the eight points of the compass, signifying the direction the earthquake was located.

Many sources22232425 claim that the 10th century Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yunus used a pendulum for time measurement, but this was an error that originated in 1684 with the British historian Edward Bernard. During the Renaissance, large pendulums were used as sources of power for manual reciprocating machines such as saws, bellows, and pumps. 29 Leonardo da Vinci made many drawings of the motion of pendulums, though without realizing its value for timekeeping.

Italian scientist Galileo Galilei was the first to study the properties of pendulums, beginning around 1602. 30 His first existent report of his research is contained in a letter to Guido Ubaldo dal Monte, from Padua, dated November 29, 1602. 31 His biographer and student, Vincenzo Viviani, claimed his interest had been sparked around 1582 by the swinging motion of a chandelier in the Pisa cathedral.

32 Galileo discovered the crucial property that makes pendulums useful as timekeepers, called isochronism; the period of the pendulum is approximately independent of the amplitude or width of the swing. 33 He also found that the period is independent of the mass of the bob, and proportional to the square root of the length of the pendulum. He first employed freeswinging pendulums in simple timing applications.

A physician friend invented a device which measured a patient's pulse by the length of a pendulum; the pulsilogium. 30 In 1641 Galileo conceived and dictated to his son Vincenzo a design for a pendulum clock;33 Vincenzo began construction, but had not completed it when he died in 1649. 34 The pendulum was the first harmonic oscillator used by man.

In 1656 the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens built the first pendulum clock. 35 This was a great improvement over existing mechanical clocks; their best accuracy was increased from around 15 minutes deviation a day to around 15 seconds a day. 36 Pendulums spread over Europe as existing clocks were retrofitted with them.

The English scientist Robert Hooke studied the conical pendulum around 1666, consisting of a pendulum that is free to swing in two dimensions, with the bob rotating in a circle or ellipse. 38 He used the motions of this device as a model to analyze the orbital motions of the planets. 39 Hooke suggested to Isaac Newton in 1679 that the components of orbital motion consisted of inertial motion along a tangent direction plus an attractive motion in the radial direction.