Re: [Phys-L] Pendulum again again

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 3/20/25 04:33, Joseph Bellina via Phys-l wrote:
> One further point in the event that there are too few or no
> stopwatches the experiments can be done by the teacher keeping time
> and the students counting swings. I have used a form of this with
> students in grades 3 through 13

1) That's clever. I like that.

2) How many of them figured out the following?
  You can reduce the quantization error, especially
  for the longer/slower pendulums:
  Rather than counting "swings" per se, count
  the number of zero-crossings plus the number of
  turning points, then divide by 4.

3) Maybe not the 3rd graders, but many of the
 13th graders nowadays have smartphones. Here's a
 web page that functions as:
  *) a plain old clock,
  *) and a stopwatch,
  *) with a powerful split-timer.

It can record an unlimited number of splits, with millisecond
resolution.

On a desktop you can copy all the splits to the clipboard,
and then paste them into your favorite editor or spreadsheet
app.

In an android environment, you can /share/ the splits to
the app of your choice.

============

There's a serious lesson in this: There are a great many
situations where you get better results by timestamping
things (rather than counting them over some interval)
In the research lab there are event-timers all over the
place, often with sub-nanosecond resolution.

Back in the horse-and-buggy days, people used counters,
which produced a smaller amount of data, which was
easier to manage ... but not any more. You don't want
less data; you want cleaner data. Managing it is the
least of your worries. That's what computers are for.