Pendulum Guided Inquiry Activity

For the application assignment in my Exploring the Physical World class, we were asked to choose a question to explore on momentum. The question I chose was "Which pendulum will come to rest more quickly—a lighter pendulum or heavier pendulum?" To investigate the answer to this question I used the following materials and procedures.

Materials-
long piece of string
3 washers of different sizes
stopwatch
notebook

Procedures-
1. Make a pendulum by putting the string through the hole in the small washer and grabbing the two ends of the string at the top with the washer hanging straight down. Raise the washer and string so the string is taut and the washer is at the same level as the hand holding the ends of the string and release. Observe the pendulum in motion and time the motion from when the washer was released until it comes to a stop. Record the time in your journal. Repeat two more times.
2. Repeat the above procedures with the medium and large sized washers.

Through my investigation, I found that the larger the washer was, the longer the pendulum stayed in motion, confirming my understanding that an item with more mass has more momentum, will remain in motion longer and takes more force (in this case, gravity) to stop its motion.

This was an easy guided inquiry activity to conduct and feel that it would be effective in helping students understand how mass effects momentum.