The Pendulum: From Constrained Fall to the Concept of Potential |
| |
| Authors: | Fabio Bevilacqua Lidia Falomo Lucio Fregonese Enrico Giannetto Franco Giudice Paolo Mascheretti |
| |
| Institution: | (1) Dipartimento di Fisica “Alessandro Volta”, Università di Pavia, Via Bassi, 6, 27100 Pavia, Italy |
| |
| Abstract: | Kuhn underlined the relevance of Galileo’s gestalt switch in the interpretation of a swinging body from constrained fall to
time metre. But the new interpretation did not eliminate the older one. The constrained fall, both in the motion of pendulums
and along inclined planes, led Galileo to the law of free fall. Experimenting with physical pendulums and assuming the impossibility
of perpetual motion Huygens obtained a law of conservation of vis viva at specific positions, beautifully commented by Mach. Daniel Bernoulli generalised Huygens results introducing the concept
of potential and the related independence of the ‘work’ done from the trajectories (paths) followed: vis viva conservation at specific positions is now linked with the potential. Feynman’s modern way of teaching the subject shows striking
similarities with Bernoulli’s approach. A number of animations and simulations can help to visualise and teach some of the
pendulum’s interpretations related to what we now see as instances of energy conservation. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录！ |
|
