Investigating damped harmonic oscillations

[Nate4498]

Hi, I am investigating damped harmonic oscillations using my smartphone to record the motion of the phone as a swinging pendulum.

Is there any uncertainty related with running the acceleration (without g) sensor?

Also, I notice that there are small wavelets formed when you look at the graphs of linear acceleration in the x and z direction, but not the y direction. Why is this?

Thanks.

[Jens Noriʇzsɔɥ]

Hi Nate,

please check out Solid's post, phyphox.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=869&pid=1538#pid1538, and the reference therein. That perhaps answers some of your questions and shows an alternative setup idea.

Are you analyzing a mathematical or a physical pendulum? Could there be an overlaying rotation so that your smartphone's x-axis does not permanently correspond to the pendulum direction?