Question

(a) You wish to determine the height of the smokestack of a local coal burning power plant. You convince a member of the maintenance crew to mount the support for a simple pendulum at the top of the stack and you suspend a 1.00 kg mass that just misses the ground at its lowest point from the pendulum cord. If the period of the pendulum is 29.8 s, determine the height of the smokestack. m
(b) If you had the ability to take this pendulum to the moon, where the acceleration due to gravity is 1.67 m/s2, what would you expect the period of the pendulum to be? s

Answer 1

Values provided in the question are as follows,

Mass suspended = 1kg

Period measured = 29.8s

We know that equation for time period of a simple pendulum is :

Where T the time period.L is the length of the string or in this case height of the smokestack.

a) So solving for L equation becomes   

Substituting   

b) In case of moon the acceleration due to moons gravity(gm) is 1.67m/s as given in the question.

Time period on moon will be where gm is the acceleration due to moons gravity.