Re: Pieces of string too small to use. . .

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

> There is a story in our community of someone finding among the personal
> effects of a deceased sister a box labelled "pieces of string too small to
> use."   The windows of our 110-year old house are being replaced, and I
> have in true nunnish tradition, glommed onto 15 antique sash weights.  If
> you were me, to what pedagogical use could you put these 1.5 inch
> diameter, foot-long  hunks of iron?
>
> Margaret J. Clarke, OSB
> Physics Department
> College of St. Scholastica
> Duluth MN 55811
> mclarke@css.edu

Ther have been lots of good suggestions in response to this request. Here's
one that occured to me. Their shape (long and thin) can be used to
illustrate the difference between a simple pendulum and a physical
pendulum, by making the string connecting them to the support shorter and
shorter, and seeing that as the length of the weight becomes a larger and
larger fraction of the pendulum length, the measured period differs
increasingly from the period calculated from the simple pendulum formula.

But I really liked James McLean's suggestion about explaining what they are
used for and relating it to Atwood's machine (and elevators, and...etc.,
etc.)

Hugh

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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