Pendulum Underwater Viscosity

J. Costa Leme, Escola EB/S de Lanheses, Viana do Castelo, Portugal

C. Moura, Departamento de Fsica, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

Viscosity is internal friction in a fluid. Viscous forces oppose the motion of one portion of a fluid relative to
another. Viscous effects are important in the flow of fluids in pipes, the flow of blood, the lubrication of engine parts,
and many other situations.
The present work, the authors intend to use experiments for the oscillations of a physical pendulum, in the form
of a long and light string that carries a ball at its lower end, immersed in water to measure the water viscosity. So we are
in the present of viscously damped pendulum and we use theories describing the Drag Force approaches to a viscously
damped oscillating sphere.
The experimental part of the present work is based on a very simple and low cost image capturing process. A
standard video digital camera recorder is used video analysis software Tracker
1
to measure amplitude as a function of
time. The experiment was developed inside a PVC cylinder container.


Introduction

The topics of oscillations and harmonic motion are of fundamental importance to physics and
engineering undergraduate courses and they are covered theoretical and experimentally in most
of the undergraduate courses. The oscillating water columns
2
, swinging pendulums
3
, masses
attached to springs
4,5,6
and other methods
7
, are the most used examples. The collection and the
analysis of the experimental data is normally done with the use of potentiometers
Error! Bookmark
not defined.
, photocells
8
, photosensors
9
webcam
Error! Bookmark not defined.
, and force sensors
Error!
Bookmark not defined.,Error! Bookmark not defined.
.

The In the present work, a very simple and low cost image capturing process is used to analyze the motion of a
simple pendulum in water in order to measure the water viscosity. A standard video digital camera recorder is used on
the video analysis software Tracker to measure the amplitude of the oscillations as a function of time. The theories
describing the drag force approaches to a viscously damped oscillating sphere are used to determine the water viscosity.

authors intend to use experiments for the oscillations of a physical pendulum, in the form of a long and light
string that carries a ball at its lower end, immersed in water to measure the water viscosity. So we are in the present of
viscously damped pendulum and we use theories describing the Drag Force approaches to a viscously damped oscillating
sphere.


Theories and Models

The A typical simple pendulum consists of wire by which a massive object, like a sphere, is
suspended from one end of an unstretchable massless string that is fixed at the other end, as is shown in
figure 1 .

The mathematical model is based on the force diagram shown in Fig. 1.,The forces acting on the object are the
tension force T from the string, where T is the tension force, F
D
is the drag force, F
g
is the gravity gravitacional force
(weight) and B is the buoyancy, for a sphere immersed in a fluid.


Comment [c1]: Esta parte ter de ser feita no
fim
Formatted: English (U.K.)
Formatted: English (U.K.)
Comment [c2]: A escrita das foras deve ter o
sinal de vetor. Eu estou com problemas no meu
editor de equaes e no consigo corrigir.




















There are three forces acting in the tangential direction, namely, the drag force, F
D
, and the projections of the
weight and buoyancy forces on this direction. The magnitude of the weight and the buoyancy are given by:

(1)

(2)

where g is the gravity acceleration,

is the fluid density,

is the mass, r and d is the radius and diameter of the

sphere and

is the sphere volume.

The motion equation by Newtons second law gives for the tangential direction:

(3)

However, if the angle is very small, is very nearly equal to in radians, Fig.1. and like we can
rewriting this equation one obtains:

(4)


Now let's consider the drag force models.

I -Stokes law

The drag force for a sphere that is moving in a viscous fluid depends on how large the Reynolds number (Re) is,
which is given by

(5)

where is sphere radius, is the fluid viscosity and is the relative speed between fluid and object. For small
Reynolds numbers

, the drag force is linear with speed is given by Stokes law:

(6)

Fig. 1. Forces diagram for a spherical pendulum

L

me

g
s
x
Formatted: Font: (Default) CMR12, 12 pt
Comment [c3]: Na figura tambm necessrio
colocar o sinal vetorial e colocar o ndice da Drag
force com D maisculo porque assim que aparece
no texto.
Comment [c4]: Acho que deveria escrever a
expresso normal usando o raio e por isso 4/3 e
depois igualar a 1/6
Comment [c5]: Acho que a escrita das equaes
deveria ser feita com a escrita habitual da derivada
(ou seja d/dt) por fica mais fcil de ler e tambm
mais elegante
Where d is diameter sphere.

Replacing Eqs. (6) in Eq. (4), the motion equation can be written as:

(7)

And rewriting this equation one obtains:

(8)

Its motion equation can be written as

(9)

Where the constants are given by

The case of underdamped simple harmonic motion, when

, is achieved when the mass oscillates in

a low viscosity medium such as distilled water, the motion is described by
Error! Bookmark not defined.,Error! Bookmark not defined.,10,11

(10)

where A, and are the amplitude, phase and frequency, respectively, of the oscillations.
Where the frequency is given by

It was found that the Stokes law for modelling the oscillatory system has limitations, because the fit of the
experimental results with eq. (10) is not the best and the obtained viscosities are much greater than the real ones. Such
limitations result because its application requires not only a small Reynolds number but also a stationary motion
12
, which
is not fulfilled in the damped oscillatory case.


I I - LandauLifshitz

Landau and Lifshitz developed the viscous dragging force theory for a spherical body in oscillatory motion
12
.
This theory does not require a small Reynolds number (in our case we have 50<Re<100), but the amplitude of the
oscillations must be very small compared to the sphere diameter. In this case, the dragging force is given by
Error! Bookmark
not defined.,12

(11)

Where denote the penetration depth defined by

Replacing Eqs. (11) in Eq. (4) and after some algebra, the motion can be written as

) (12)


Now we have for b,

(13)

Then, calculating the parameters b and we can calculate the viscosity of the fluid.
However this model is applied if the mass is oscillating in a container of infinite dimensions in a finite container the
effective viscosity is larger than that in an infinite container. The application of this model gives values slightly higher
viscosities to accepted values, however much better than those with Stokes' law
Error! Bookmark not defined.
. The theory used to
obtain Eq (11) does not take into consideration variables suchs as temperature and pressure, turbulence and border. In
order to have a better description of experimental oscillatory measurements, In the case of a finite container becomes
necessary to add a corrective term added to the Eq. (11), Chen and Wang
13
determined resulting in the following
equation:

I I I - LandauLifshitz+corrective term

) (

) (14)

R being the radius of the cylindrical container. Now the motion can be written as,

) (15)



for b,


(

(16)








THE EXPERIMENT AND DATA ANALYSIS

The experimental setup is simple. We used a steel sphere immersed in a volume 650 mL of tap water, at
temperature of 19,0
0
C, Fig. 2 inside a cylindrical container with a diameter D=(111,120,01) mm and height of 70,92
mm. The pendulum sphere was (19,040,01) mm in diameter, having mass (28,3430,001) g which is attached to a fine
string cord, but rigid to prevent rotation of the pendulum sphere, of 3,0 m length, to minimize errors . The pendulum to
oscillate horizontally in the fluid, while a camera (Canon PowerShot A550) acquires a time series of frames (about 720
frames equivalent a 30 s of digital movie) to measure the decaying amplitude. Like the characteristic length of the body
must be much larger than the oscillation amplitude we only used data for fitting with maximum amplitude of about 26
pixels because the diameter of the steel sphere is about 116 pixels. In our case, the nominal frame acquisition rate is set
at 24 fps, was made 7 trials movies. From the digital video, it is possible to obtain the sphere displacement around its
equilibrium position, which is determined by equation (10). Was used for the density of the water the value 1000,0
Kg/m
3
.



Fig. 2. Experimental Set-up. The spherical mass is in the horizontal line of sight of the camera.

Video analysis software makes it easy to measure position coordinates (x, y, pixelsx and pixelsy) and time for
the oscillating sphere. To minimize errors in detecting the position of the ball in the movies, allowing us AutoTracker,
the footage was shot in low light and a small light was emitted to the reflection sphere. This reflection is our white
marker, Fig. 3. Image of the software tracker for data results.Fig. 3 allowed the acquisition of data, in horizontal
pixel units.The software measures the displacement in units of pixels-x as a function of time. Then we copied data to a
software Origin
14
to plot the data and made a nonlinear curve fitting to obtain the values of the parameters and b.
Using the expression

for the model Stokes law,

for the LandauLifshitz and

(

for the LandauLifshitz+corrective term and with

was calculated the viscosity of the

water for the three models.














DATA ANALYSIS


The Fig. 3. shows the experimental data points obtained, frame, graph and table, from the tracker software for the movie
number 1155.


Fig. 3. Image of the software tracker for data results.

The Fig. 4 shows the experimental results of sphere oscillation (points) as a function of time for the immersed sphere in
tap water. Also it is possible to observe the fit to the theoretical models given by equations (10).


Fig. 4. Damped simple harmonic oscillation versus time (dots). Parameter values according to fits (solid curve) are
A=(-27,520,06) pixelx, ,

and b=(0,03720,0002) s
-1
.
The adjusted R-squared obtained was 0,9985.

The results of parameters from curve fitting the experimental data in the Origin Software relative to damped angular
frequency, , and parameter b, where

is also called the decay time damping constant, are shown in table I.

Table I. Parameters from curve fitting of experimental data.

Pendulum with a small
reflection of
illuminated light to
better AutoTracker
Trial
(movie)
A
(pixel)
b
(s
-1
)

(rad s
-1
)

(rad)
Correlation
coefficients r
2

1155 27,520,06 0,03720,0002 0,9985
1156 23,980,04 0,03510,0001 0,9991
1157 24,870,03 0,035330,00008 0,9997
1158 26,950,05 0,03530,0001 0,9991
1159 23,90,1 0,03390,0004 0,9944
1160 31,870,04 0,03660,0001 0,9995
1161 42,510,05 0,038510,00009 0,9997




Table II. Viscosities obtained for the tap water in the three models.

Trial
(movie)
Stokes law
Viscosity,
(Pa.s)
LandauLifshitz
Viscosity,
(Pa.s)
LandauLifshitz+corrective
term
Viscosity,
(Pa.s)
1155 0,01185 0,00179 0,00108
1156 0,01109 0,00159 0,00095
1157 0,01116 0,00161 0,00096
1158 0,01115 0,00160 0,00096
1159 0,01071 0,00149 0,00089
1160 0,01156 0,00171 0,00103
1161 0,01216 0,00188 0,00113


In Table II the viscosity is shown calculated in three ways: by using the Stokeslaw, Landau-Lifshitz and
LandauLifshitz+corrective term models.
The mean and standard deviation of the experimental data for the experimental viscosities were 0,011380,0005 Pa.s,
0,001670,00013 Pa.s and 0,001000,00008 Pa.s for models Stokeslaw, Landau-Lifshitz and Landau
Lifshitz+corrective term, respectively. It is confirmed that Stokelaw has very high viscosity values, the values obtained
by the Landau-Lifshitz model gives values slightly higher viscosities to accepted values but the values obtained by the
cooretive-term are acceptable if compared with the accepted value 1,03x10
-3
Pa.s, for distilled water at 19
0
C.

Conclusions

We used video analysis to study damped harmonic motion of a underwater pendulum oscillating in tap water.
We explored a mechanical system that features a damped harmonic motion. The underwater pendulum is a didactic and
simple system to run at different levels of education and for applications in classrooms. Allowing the study of the laws
damped harmonic oscillator. The system is very easy to perform and requires only simple and inexpensive materials and
a video camera, easily available in the laboratory, the video camera can be replaced by a webcam. Three models were
used for to estimate an approximation of the dragging force, one obtained by the Law of Stoke other by Landau-Lifshitz
and another determined by Landau-Lifshitz with a corrective term. We found that the model that best represents the value
of the frictional damping is to Landau+corrective term , as the values obtained by this model are within the expected
viscosity of distilled water, while that from the expression of Stoke and Landau- Lifshitz were obtained higher values for
the viscosity. From experience we find that the amplitudes of oscillations should be far below the size of the ball
pendulum. We suggest applying the pendulum immersed in other fluids, such as glycerin, motor oil and up in the air, and
analyzed by video analysis. This type of study helps students understand the application of theoretical physics models in
real applications.


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Field Code Changed

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