VIDEO-BASED MOTION TRACKING AND ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE PENDULUM OSCILLATIONS

Abstract

In this paper, we report a very basic experiment on “Oscillatory motion of a simple Pendulum” using Tracker video analysis and a smartphone camera. Tracker software is fundamentally an ICT-based learning tool and is favoured as it is free, user-friendly, and supports effective learning and teaching. By integrating a smartphone camera into the laboratory setup, the analysis of oscillations is performed at a large angle rather than the traditional small-angle approach. This study findings highlight the feasibility of this approach in studying the motion of a simple pendulum while being simultaneously interactive and inexpensive. Here, the value of “g” (acceleration due to gravity) is determined and the damping coefficient is also calculated. We found that the large-angle approximation did not cause too large an error compared to the original value of “g”.