Question

Two students are discussing how the period of a toy pig flying in a circle depends on

the length of the string.

Student A says: The period depends on the length of the string.

Student B says: The period is independent of the length of the string.

You have the following equipment: flying pig, stand, stopwatch, metre stick, spring

scale, tape measure, strings of different lengths

How would you make an experiment to prove one of the students is correct and the other wrong?

Answer 1

Here is how we can prove that one of the student in wrong.

Take the stand and tie a string of given length to one end of stand and tie the other end of string to the pig. Now, hold the pig and bring it to some height and record the angle on a notebook and leave it in way that it moves in horizontal circle. Take a reference point and note down the time taken by the pig to complete one revolution.

Now, take another string of different length, tie it to the stand with pig at one end and let it go around the circle. Note down the time period, let the angle of release be same. Just keep on changing the lengths only.

repeat the same experiment for at least 5 times.

Now, do the experiment with same length strings but different angle of release ( do not keep the angles too large as this may lead to error)

notice the time period and repeat the steps for 5 times

now,

we will observed that when we changed the length and kept the angles same, the time period increases with increase in length but time period remained almost constant when length was kept constant.

this proves that The period depends on the length of the string.