Simulation of A Pendulum
This project stimulates the movement of a simple gravity pendulum and allows the user to explore the factors that influence the frequency of the pendulum. The program allows the users to input several factors that may or may not influence the frequency of the pendulum: the length of the string, the initial angle of the mass, the planets (with different gravitational constants) and mass of the object. The program will then generate an animation of the pendulum and the trace of the mass under the chosen conditions.
To make the animations more educational, the program will also offer comparisons between the default pendulum and the user-selected pendulum to show whether the user- selected variable contributes to the (proportional, anti-proportional) change of frequency. What’s more, the program will provide graphic analysis of the trajectory of the mass and calculations of the angular frequency, the frequency and the period of the pendulum.
If possible, this program will also incorporate the possibilities of air resistance to make the simulation more realistic. This addition involves another user input variable to generate one more force that influences the movement.
The program will be created using Python programming. The 3D animations will be designed by using VPython module, the graphic analysis and plotting will be generated by pylab module and the other sample calculations by built-in functions in Python.
