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714 Am. J. Phys. 69 6, June 2001 http://ojps.aip.org/ajp/ 2001 American Association of Physics Teachers 714
Fig. 2. Left Sketch of an arbitrarily shaped body with an arbitrarily chosen
Fig. 1. The function F(x) 2 /g relating the frequency of a physical line passing through the center of mass circle. The crosses show four pivot
pendulum without air corrections to the pivot axis location x. The frequency axes that have the same oscillation frequency, determined as in Fig. 1. The
vanishes when the pendulum is pivoted at the center-of-mass location x c . In four axes are symmetrically located about the center of mass, even if the
general there are four pivot axis locations x for which the pendulum oscil- body has no symmetry. Here one of four pivot axes lies outside the body
one should imagine a rigid, massless support connecting the pivot to the
lates at a given frequency 0 , shown by the intersections with the horizon-
body. Pivots A and B are suitable for use of the body as a Kater pendulum
tal line F 20 /g. Of the six possible interpivot distances, only x 1 and x 2
without air corrections. Right Here the body has been rotated to emphasize
satisfy the Kater condition, and only x 1 is possible for a Bessel pendulum
that any line of pivots through the center of mass can be used. The oscilla-
with pivots symmetric about x0. For this schematic plot we have sup-
tion frequency about the crosses is the same as for the left-hand side, as-
pressed units and chosen mI 0 1, x c ), 20 /g1/4. suming all pivot axes are perpendicular to the page. The oscillation fre-
quency is the same for pivots anywhere on the two circles shown centered
on the center of mass.
midway between the pivots, two important air corrections
1 1 I0 disappear allowing the simple Kater condition to be applied.
y . 4 These are the corrections for buoyancy of the pendulum in
2F 0 4F 20 m
air and for the inertia due to air dragged by the pendulum as
The two indeterminate signs in this equation may be chosen it oscillates.11
independently, giving the four possible pivot points for fre- For the following discussion, assume the volume distribu-
quency 0 . The first sign determines which side of the cen- tion i.e., the shape of the pendulum to be symmetric about
ter of mass the pivots are on, while the second sign further the point x0. The center of mass is at xx c 0, as above.
distinguishes between the locations of the pivots on that side. The effect of buoyancy is to reduce the effective weight of
If we pick the pivot closer to the center of mass on one side the pendulum by the weight of the air it displaces, m b g. That
and the pivot further away from the center of mass on the is to say, the gravitational mass of the pendulum is effec-
other side, then the radical in Eq. 4 cancels when the dis- tively reduced by m b , while the inertial mass is unaffected.
tance between pivots is calculated, giving This leads to a decrease in the numerator of Eq. 3, which is
proportional to the gravitational torque on the pendulum:
xy1/F 0 g/ 20 . 5
This is the Kater condition, Eq. 1. Conversely, if we pick
m xx c m xx c m b x . 6
two points from Eq. 4 symmetric about the center of mass
or two points on the same side of the center of mass, the
radical does not cancel. For these choices we are left with a The shape symmetry of the Bessel pendulum has been used
complicated expression for x that involves the moment of here to set the center of mass of the displaced mass m b at
715 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 69, No. 6, June 2001 Candela et al. 715
x0. Buoyancy decreases the oscillation frequency relative
to the frequency in vacuum.
The effect of dragged air is to increase the moment of
inertia of the pendulum about its pivot by some amount I d .
Therefore dragged air also decreases the oscillation fre-
quency relative to that in vacuum. Computation of I d is a
subtle problem in fluid dynamics, as discussed briefly in Ap-
pendix A. Bessel realized that I d is the same for the two
pivots, provided the shape of the pendulum is symmetric and
the frequency and amplitude of the swing are also the same.
As the shape and motion of the pendulum are identical for
the two pivot locations, the motion of the air and hence the
force it exerts on the pendulum must also be identical.
With both air corrections Eq. 3 becomes
x 2 m xx c m b x
F x . 7
g I 0 m xx c 2 I d
Primes are used here and below to signify quantities that
include air corrections. Due to the correction terms in m b and
I d , the function F (x) deviates slightly from F(x) and all
four pivot locations for a given oscillation frequency in air
0 are displaced. As we now show, the distance x between
two of the pivots nevertheless does satisfy the simple Kater
condition provided the pivots are symmetrically located
about the center of volume.
A Bessel pendulum must be adjusted to have equal fre-
quencies for two such pivots, say at xx 0 . Assume that
this adjustment has been carried out, so F (x 0 )F (x 0 ) Fig. 3. Side view of the Bessel pendulum not to scale. The pendulum
( 0 ) 2 /gF 0 . Just as for the Kater pendulum without air swings in the plane of the figure, and can be inverted so the steel bob is
corrections, set yxx c and solve F (y)(mym b x 0 )/ uppermost. See the text and Table I for further details.
y
1
2F 0
1
2F 0 2
I 0 I d m b x 0 /F 0
m
. 8
trimming collars are aluminum, and the central rod is steel.
Two sets of glass bearing plates, cut from standard micro-
scope slides, are fastened to the bobs using cyanoacrylate
This is like Eq. 4 above, but includes the two air correction cement superglue. These plates are readily replaceable,
terms. In addition, the pivot locations appropriate for a which proves necessary in routine teaching-lab use. The pen-
Bessel pendulum x 1 in Fig. 1 have been selected by dulum swings on a pair of hardened steel knife edges which
choosing the minus sign in front of the radical in Eq. 8. are mounted to a 1.3-cm-thick steel plate with a cutout for
All of the complications in this equation due to buoyancy the pendulum shaft. After mounting on the plate, the knife
and dragged air are in the radical. Just as for the Kater pen- edges were ground simultaneously to a 90 included angle.
dulum without air corrections, the radical cancels when the This ensures that the two knife edges are perfectly in line
interpivot distance is computed, giving with one another. The plate is bolted to an aluminum bracket
that is firmly fastened to a concrete column in the laboratory
xy1/F 0 g/ 0 2 . 9 room. The knife edges are leveled to within 103 rad by
This is just the Kater condition Eq. 1 with the air- temporarily attaching a fine thread and small weight on the
corrected frequency 0 . This proves that buoyant and side of the pendulum as a plumb bob.
dragged-air corrections vanish for a volumetrically symmet- Lack of rigidity of the support can be a major source of
ric reversible pendulum. Without this symmetry, the radical error for pendulum-based measurements of g.3,6 We initially
in Eq. 8 would take on different values for the two pivot mounted our knife edges so that the pendulum swung paral-
locations and the necessary cancellation would not occur. lel to the concrete column face. With this arrangement the
value of g we measured was about 250 ppm less than inde-
pendent g data which are detailed below. We subsequently
IV. CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION OF A rotated the steel plate by 90 so the pendulum swings per-
BESSEL PENDULUM pendicularly to the column face. As the column face is
rough, small copper shims were inserted between the alumi-
In this section we describe a Bessel pendulum that we num bracket and the column directly behind each knife edge.
have successfully used as part of a laboratory course for Together these changes result in short, direct mechanical
junior-level physics majors. The pendulum consists of two connections between the knife edges and the column. With
large cylindrical bobs and two small trimming collars affixed the new mounting arrangement, our measured g value is
to a central rod by setscrews Fig. 3. To achieve the neces- about 200 ppm larger and agrees better with the independent
sary mass asymmetry while maintaining shape symmetry, data. Despite the relatively massive dimensions of the steel
716 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 69, No. 6, June 2001 Candela et al. 716
Table I. Dimensions of the principal parts of the pendulum.
717 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 69, No. 6, June 2001 Candela et al. 717
and latitude of our pendulum this gives g980.361 Gal,
while the International Gravity Formula gives g
980.369 Gal. Thus our measurement is 68 ppm smaller
than the value inferred from BGI data, which may be com-
pared with our stated uncertainty of 63 ppm.
How big are the atmospheric effects for which Bessels
pendulum corrects? To address this question we have used
the equation for the frequency of a physical pendulum, Eq.
2, to directly compute the expected periods for our pendu-
lum both with and without buoyancy and dragged-air correc-
tions Fig. 5. For these calculations, the positions of the
bobs and pivots were assumed to be fixed and only the collar
positions were varied. As can be seen from the vertical sepa-
ration of the various curves in Fig. 5, the shifts in period due
to buoyancy and dragged air are a few parts in 104 . This
could be anticipated from the relative densities of air and
Fig. 5. Calculated periods for our pendulum with and without air correc- steel. It also can be seen that both buoyancy and dragged air
tions. The solid curves show periods calculated including both buoyancy increase the period at fixed collar position, and that the two
and dragged air. The dashed curves omit buoyancy while the dotted curves corrections are similar in magnitude.
omit both buoyancy and dragged air, as would occur if the pendulum were The period at which the curves intersect is independent of
operated in vacuum. For each pair of curves, the steeper curve is for the which air corrections are included in the calculation hori-
aluminum bob down and the shallower curve is for the steel bob down.
zontal line in Fig. 5. Thus, the measured value of g is the
Local gravity g and the interpivot distance x were set equal to the values
measured for our pendulum, hence the trimmed period is also the same as
same for a Bessel pendulum swinging in air or swinging in
measured. As the horizontal line shows, the trimmed period is independent vacuum. This would not be true for an asymmetrically
of air corrections. These curves were calculated using the nominal dimen- shaped pendulum, and graphically demonstrates that Bessels
sions of the pendulum and typical densities for steel and aluminum, with no improvement to the Kater pendulum really works.
adjustable parameters. The collar position at which the periods are equal
could be adjusted to agree with the data Fig. 4 by adjusting the material
densities by about 1%, well within our uncertainty. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the NSF Instrumentation and
Laboratory Improvement program under Grant No. DUE-
it is used, and the change in length due to thermal expansion 9751231.
must be calculated. The second method achieves somewhat
greater accuracy, but does not allow the students to explore APPENDIX A: INERTIA DUE TO DRAGGED AIR
the effects of moving the bobs on the central shaft.
To determine whether the experiment actually measures For measurements of g with a Bessel pendulum, the mo-
the local value of g with the expected accuracy, it is impor- ment of inertia I d added by dragged air need not be known,
tant to have a reliable independent value. The customary unit as it cancels in going from Eq. 8 to Eq. 9. Nevertheless, it
for tabulations of g is Galcm/s2. An internet-accessible da- may be interesting to know the origin and approximate value
tabase of absolute values of g at many reference stations on of I d . The existence of an effective added mass due to mo-
the surface of the Earth is maintained by the Bureau tion of the air was noted by Du Buat in 1786, and indepen-
Gravimetrique International BGI.14 Alternatively, the In- dently by Bessel in 1828.8 Analytical expressions for the
ternational Gravity Formula 1980 may be used to approxi- inertial and damping forces on oscillating bodies immersed
mate g at mean sea level as a function of latitude .15 Omit- in viscous fluids were derived by Stokes in 1851.17 For a
ting terms smaller than 1 mGal, this formula reads more detailed discussion of the dragged air mass than is
given here, see Ref. 8.
g 978.0327 Gal 15.279 041 4103 sin2 When a solid body undergoes oscillatory motion in a vis-
2.327 18105 sin4 . 10 cous fluid such as air, the flow is rotational in a layer of
characteristic thickness and irrotational outside this layer.
Deviations from the formula due to local density variations The distance is called the viscous penetration depth, given
are typically on the order of tens of mGal, while temporal by
variations of g at a position fixed on the Earth due mostly to
tides are about 0.3 mGal.15 In all cases a correction must be 2 / 1/2, A1
applied for the difference in height between the pendulum where is the angular oscillation frequency and is the
and the independent g datum.16 kinematic viscosity 0.15 cm2 /s for air in standard
Using the period data shown in Fig. 4 along with a mea- conditions.18 When is much less than the dimensions of
sured interpivot distance x77.051 00(76) cm, we find g the oscillating body, fluid motion outside the thin rotational
980.291(62) Gal at the location of our Bessel pendulum layer is the same as for an inviscid liquid and the added mass
latitude 42.3914, longitude 72.5258, ground height 70 can be computed from the corresponding inviscid flow prob-
m above sea level plus additional free-air height 5 m. Our lem. For example, the added mass is one-half the mass of the
stated uncertainties are 90% confidence intervals approxi- displaced fluid for a spherical body, and equal to the mass of
mately 2. At the BGI reference station nearest to our the displaced fluid for an infinitely long cylindrical body.18
pendulum 3.95 km distant and 24 m lower in height the Although there is no simple expression for a body of arbi-
tabulated g980.363 45(20) Gal. Corrected to the height trary shape, it can be seen that the total added mass m d due
718 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 69, No. 6, June 2001 Candela et al. 718
to dragged air is comparable to the displaced air mass m b for
small penetration depth .
If is made similar to or larger than the dimensions of the
body for example, by reducing the frequency of oscillation,
the rotational layer extends further into the fluid and the
added mass increases. With the effect of air on pendulums in
mind, Stokes derived the force on an infinitely long oscillat-
ing cylinder for any value of relative to the cylinder
radiushis solution is expressed in terms of Bessel
functions!17 Stokes solution is only valid for small oscilla-
tion amplitude much less than the cylinder radius, in the
small- limit. For larger oscillation amplitude, the nonlinear
term in the NavierStokes equation becomes important and
the force due to dragged air is more difficult to calculate.8,18
We may picture the dragged air as extra mass m d distrib-
Fig. 6. Diagram used to compute the rise h and horizontal shift s of the
uted along the length of the pendulum. The mass distribution pendulum due to the finite radius of the knife edge. The circular arc repre-
depends upon oscillation frequency through , but it is inde- sents the knife edge. The dashed line represents the bearing plate when the
pendent of oscillation amplitude for sufficiently small ampli- pendulum is vertical, while the solid line represents the bearing plate when
tudes. Therefore, the mass distribution for a Bessel pendu- the pendulum is at an angle 0. When the pendulum swings away from
lum is symmetric about the center of volume x0. The vertical, the line on the bearing plate that is initially in contact with the knife
parallel axis theorem can be used to express the added mo- edge moves from the position of the open circle to the position of the closed
circle, assuming rolling contact between the knife edge and bearing plate.
ment of inertia about the pivot,
I d I d0 m d x 2 , A2
where I d0 is the moment of inertia of the added mass distri- due to horizontal velocities of the various parts. For perfectly
bution about x0. The pendulum described in this paper has
sharp knife edges, these velocities are proportional to . The
a period of 1.8 s, giving 3 mm. Thus, it is in the small-
additional horizontal velocity due to knife-edge rounding is
limit and m d m b . For a more quantitative estimate of m d
s 2 , and so has no effect on the frequency for 0.
and I d0 , this pendulum could be roughly modeled as a long
cylinder the central rod plus two spheres the bobs. This The vertical movement h is of the same order in as the
approximation was used for the calculations shown in Fig. 5. rise in the center of mass for a zero-radius knife edge, l 2 /2.
Therefore h changes the potential energy as if the distance
APPENDIX B: ROUNDING OF THE KNIFE EDGES between the pivot and the center of mass were increased by
r. This adds a term mr to the numerator of Eq. 3 or 7. The
AND FLEXING OF THE SUPPORT
added term is the same for both positions of the pendulum,
The knife edges used to support the pendulum cannot be so it cancels when the interpivot distance is computed, just
perfectly sharp, and it is natural to suppose that this will like the buoyancy correction.
introduce an error in the determination of g with a Kater or Another potential source of error associated with the
Bessel pendulum. Bessel showed that rounding of the knife knife-edge pivots is flexibility that allows them to move as
edges has no effect to first order on the measured value of g, the pendulum swings. Unfortunately, flexibility in the knife-
provided that the knife-edge radius is unchanged when the edge support results in horizontal motion of order , and so
pendulum is inverted.4 This is automatically the case when gives a first-order error in the g measurement. The only hori-
the knife edges are stationary and the flat bearing plates are zontal force on the pendulum is transmitted through the piv-
on the pendulum, as in our design. In this Appendix we ots. We model the support as a horizontal spring with spring
outline a proof, leaving a few details for the reader to work constant k. Computing the force exerted by this spring as the
out. We also discuss the effect on the measured value of g of mass m of the pendulum times the horizontal acceleration of
flexing in the knife-edge support. the center of mass, the horizontal motion of the pivot is
Assume that the contact area of the knife edge is cylindri- s m 2 /k l l , B2
cal with radius r, and that the bearing plate rolls on the knife
edge without slipping both assumptions could be questioned where l is the distance between pivot and center of mass.20
for an actual pendulum. When the pendulum swings through As the movement of the pivot should be much smaller than
an angle , the line on the bearing plate that contacted the the movement of the pendulum center of mass, we can as-
knife edge at 0 rises by an amount h and moves to the sume 1.
side by an amount s Fig. 6. Elementary trigonometry The total kinetic energy of the pendulum is the sum of
shows energies for rotation about the center of mass and translation
of the center of mass,
h/rcos sin 1 2 /2O 4 ,
B1 E k I 0 2 /2m l s 2 /2 I 0 ml 1 2 2 /2
s/rsin cos O 3 .
These vertical and horizontal movements of the pendulum I 0 ml 2 12 2 /2. B3
are in addition to the ordinary rotational movement. The sim- Therefore, the term in m in the denominators of Eqs. 3 and
plest way to deduce their effect on the oscillation frequency 7 is modified as
is to consider the pendulums kinetic and potential energy.19
For small oscillations the kinetic energy of the pendulum is m xx c 2 m 12 xx c 2 . B4
719 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 69, No. 6, June 2001 Candela et al. 719
With this substitution it is easily verified that the Kater con- Bessel pendulum is often called the RepsoldBessel or BesselRepsold
dition, Eq. 1, is changed to 6
reversible pendulum.
A. H. Cook, The Absolute Determination of the Acceleration Due to
20 g/ x 12 . B5 Gravity, Metrologia 1, 84114 1965.
7
I. Marson and J. E. Faller, gthe acceleration of gravity: Its measure-
Thus, the apparent value of g is fractionally less than the true ment and its importance, J. Phys. E 19, 2232 1986.
value of g by 2 2m 2 /k. Our pendulum has m 8
R. A. Nelson and M. G. Olsson, The pendulumRich physics from a
18.5 kg, 2 /(1.76 s). To achieve an error due to sup- simple system, Am. J. Phys. 54, 112121 1986.
9
port flex 2 105 , we require k4.7107 N/m. We may R. D. Peters, Student-Friendly Precision Pendulum, Phys. Teach. 37,
390393 1999.
imagine a support consisting of horizontal rods of length L 10
A. Dupre and P. Janssen, An accurate determination of the acceleration
and total cross-sectional area A connecting the pendulum of gravity g in the undergraduate laboratory, Am. J. Phys. 68, 704711
pivots to an infinitely massive wall. If the Youngs modulus 2000.
11
of the support rods is E, their effective spring constant is k The frequency shift due to viscous damping by the air remains present in
AE/L. If we use aluminum support rods 10 cm long for 12
a Bessel pendulum, and must be corrected for if significant.
K. E. Jesse, Kater pendulum modification, Am. J. Phys. 48, 785786
our pendulum (E71010 N/m2), their total cross-sectional 1980.
area must be at least 0.7 cm2 to achieve 2 105 . For less 13
The finite-amplitude correction is the same for a physical pendulum as it is
favorable geometries, like our initial arrangement with the for a simple pendulum. As the fractional change in period is simply a
pendulum swinging parallel to the wall, correspondingly function of the angular oscillation amplitude 0 , the Kater and Bessel
more massive support is required. pendulums can be adjusted for reversibility at fixed, finite 0 . Then the
It is also interesting to calculate the actual support flex finite-amplitude correction for this 0 is applied before using the Kater
under operating conditions, using Eq. B2. For our pendu- 14
relation to determine g.
Internet address: bgi.cnes.fr
lum the mean l39 cm and we typically use swing ampli- 15
P. Vancek and E. Krakiwsky, Geodesy: The Concepts North-Holland,
tude 0 4103 rad. Therefore, if the pivot support is stiff Amsterdam, 1986, 2nd ed., p. 79.
enough to give 2 105 , the amplitude s 0 of the pivot 16
The height correction for locally flat topography is g/h 2(3/2)
movement must be no more than 8 nm. This is about one- ( c / e ) g/R e where h is the height difference and e and R e are the
seventieth of a wavelength of visible light. In the era of mean density and radius of the Earth, respectively. The mean density of
precision pendulum measurements of gravity, optical inter- the local crust material beneath the higher of the two points being com-
pared is c . The first term expresses the 1/R 2 dependence of gravity in
ferometers were used to measure this small pivot movement
free space, while the second accounts for the gravitational attraction of the
and sometimes two matched pendulums were swung out of local material. The second term the so-called Bouguer correction is com-
phase from the same support in an effort to minimize it.3 parable in size to the first and cannot be omitted. For example, the free-air
( c 0) gravity gradient is g/h3.08 mGal/m while for typical
a
Electronic mail: candela@physics.umass.edu c / e 0.5 we have g/h2 mGal/m. The second term is easily de-
b
Present address: Physics Department, Amherst College, Amherst, rived by modeling the local material as a disk much wider than it is thick,
MA 01002. but much smaller than the Earth. For a more detailed discussion including
1
D. Kleppner and R. J. Kolenkow, An Introduction to Mechanics the effects of topography, see Ref. 15, Chap. 21.
McGrawHill, New York, 1973, pp. 257258. 17
G. G. Stokes, Trans. Cambridge Philos. Soc. II 9, 8 1851; Mathemati-
2
J. B. Marion, Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems Sanders Col- cal and Physical Papers Cambridge U.P., London, 1922, Vol. 3, p. 1
lege Publishing, Fort Worth, 1995, 4th ed., p. 455. 1901.
3
V. F. Lenzen and R. P. Multhauf, Development of Gravity Pendulums in 18
L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz, Fluid Mechanics Pergamon, Oxford,
the 19th Century, Contributions from the Museum of History and Tech- 1987, 2nd ed., p. 83ff.
nology Paper 44 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1965, pp. 303 19
The pendulum is a simple harmonic oscillator with potential energy E p
352.
4
F. W. Bessel, Untersuchungen uber die Lange des einfachen Secunden- A 2 /2 and kinetic energy E k B 2 /2. Using energy conservation E p
pendels, Abhandlungen der Konigliche Akademie der Wissenshaften zu E k gives (A/B) , hence 2 A/B. For the pendulum A is g
Berlin 1826; also published as Untersuchungen uber die Lange des ein- times the numerator of Eq. 3 or 7, while B is the denominator.
fachen Secundenpendels Bruns, Leipzig, 1889. 20
In writing Eq. B2 we assume that the resonant frequency of the support
5
Precision pendulums based on Bessels design were first constructed in for horizontal vibrations is much greater than the frequency of the pendu-
1861 after Bessels death by the firm A. Repsold and Sons, hence the lum. In this limit the mass of the support can be ignored.
720 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 69, No. 6, June 2001 Candela et al. 720