Measurement of the gravitational acceleration using a simple pendulum apparatus, ultrasonic sensor, and Arduino

Abstract

An insightful experimental procedure aimed to measure the gravitational acceleration is reported. The setup is made up of a simple pendulum apparatus, an ultrasonic position sensor, and an Arduino Uno board. The period of oscillations, which leads to the determination of the gravitational acceleration, is obtained from the time series plots of the position of the sensor associated to the pendulum crossing or clearing it periodically. The obtained value of the gravitational acceleration is 9.82 ± 0.10 m s −2 which is in a satisfactory agreement with our local theoretical value of 9.78 m s −2 . The percent error is 0.40%

Development of a computer-based simple pendulum experiment set for teaching and learning physics

“…Our results support the findings of other scientists (Khairurrijal et al, 2012;Pili and Violanda, 2019;Sanjaya et al, 2018;Sinacore and Takai, 2010;Yulkifli et al, 2018) who used simple pendulum motion experiment set to calculate the gravitational acceleration (g) in different places. One study in New York (USA) (Sinacore and Takai, 2010) used pendulum, telephone pickup, and sound card oscilloscope to calculate the g-value and their calculated g-value was 9.774 m/s 2 with an error of 0.3%.…”

“…In the digital method, they used a photogate sensor and computer interface with Arduino pro mini. One more study in the Philippines (Pili and Violanda, 2019) used an ultrasonic sensor and an Arduino Uno board to calculate g-value and their calculated g-value was 9.82 ± 0.10 m/s 2 .…”

“…Through this type of experiment, students obtain more accurate physics concepts compared to the conventional teaching method. These computer-based experimental sets can include various sensors, including photogate sensor (Yulkifli et al, 2018), ultrasonic sensor (Cutnell and Johnson, 2010;Galeriu et al, 2014;Pili and Violanda, 2019;Sanjaya et al, 2018;Tong-on et al, 2017), and infrared sensor (Musik, 2014(Musik, , 2017, which makes physics learning more comfortable for the student.…”

Application of ultrasonic sensor and Arduino in analysing motion of damped pendulum

“…In physics curriculum, simple harmonic, damped and driven oscillations are fundamental topics. Several studies have investigated a damped harmonic motion from different systems such as a solid mass-spring system [1], mass-spring oscillations in liquids [2], a simple pendulum [3], a damped pendulum [4,5], and a physical pendulum [6]. These studies employed different methods such as high-speed video analysis using Tracker [2], commercial data acquisition equipment [4,5] and Arduino platform board and sensors [1,3,5].…”

Why do we choose the fastest point as a reference to measure the simple pendulum period by a stopwatch?

“…Also, the obtained data was automatically recorded in an Excel spreadsheet. Meanwhile, Pili and Violanda [7] measured the gravitational acceleration value with high accuracy by automatically measuring the periodic motion of a simple pendulum using an ultrasonic positioner and Arduino. We agree that measuring the period using a smartphone or a precision measuring instrument can get accurate values, but we think that we need to prepare too much for the experimental class in the classroom.…”