Science Week Visit with Mr. Heff

For science week, Sydney’s dad, Mr. Heff, came and showed us how to use a pendulum in physics. The pendulum was a metal washer attached to a string. We used them to tell the gravity’s pull. Gravity’s pull pulled the washer down, but the string kept it from falling farther.  It had nowhere to go, but it still had energy, so that’s why it swung back and forth.  Pendulums are also used for telling time. We each worked with a partner and a pendulum.  We noticed that the pendulum swung at a constant rate. It didn’t matter how heavy the washer was, but it did matter how long the string was. In the pendulum experiment, we had to know the length of the string and how many times it swung back and forth in 30 seconds.  For example, a string 43cm long did 24 swings in 1.25 seconds.  Finally, Mr. Heff made a graph that showed our results.

by Alex and Max