Physics: Multiple Choice:

Question

Because of friction pendulum clocks need a small driving force, if accidentally it was too large of a driving force and caused a bit too large of an angle of oscillation to be formed what would happen to the time the clock was keeping?

 

a. It would lose time, running slow.

b. It would gain time, running fast.

Answer 1

The period of a pendulum with a small angle of oscillation is approximately 2π√(L/g).  However, there are actually additional terms in the equation for the period that increase as the angle of oscillation increases.  So the larger the angle, the larger the additional terms are, and therefore the longer it takes for the pendulum to make one oscillation.

 

As each tick of the clock (one oscillation) takes longer, the clock appears to runs slower.  So the answer is a.