Pendulum Lab

This is a great inquiry lab for your physics unit! In this activity students will be asked to figure out which of the following variables affect the period of the pendulum swing: the mass, the length of the string, or the angle the pendulum is released from.

All you need for this lab is: string, a ring stand (or other object to hang the string from) a stopwatch, a protractor, and some hanging masses. Don't have hanging masses? You can hang a cup instead and add pennies or marbles for weight (see the images below).

I gave the students 2 days to complete this lab. The first day they just played around with the pendulums and tried to figure out which variable affected the pendulum swing. The second day I had them time the swings, record data, and make conclusions. It was a great introduction to my unit on motion! If you'd like to check out the 2 day lab write-up I made, it is available in my TpT store.

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