Is tension equal to weight in a pendulum?

The forces acting on the bob of a pendulum are its weight and the tension of the string. The tension lies completely in the radial direction and the weight must be broken into components. The net radial force leads to radial acceleration, which is a centripetal acceleration.

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Subsequently, what did galileo discover about pendulums?

Galileo's discovery was that the period of swing of a pendulum is independent of its amplitude--the arc of the swing--the isochronism of the pendulum. [1] Now this discovery had important implications for the measurement of time intervals. How are pendulums used in real life? Pendulums are used in many engineered objects, such as clocks, metronomes, amusement park rides and earthquake seismometers. In addition, engineers know that understanding the physics of how pendulums behave is an important step towards understanding motion, gravity, inertia and centripetal force.

How does gravity affect a pendulum?

Gravity is one of two main forces acting upon a pendulum at any given time, helping create the back-and-forth motion of the swinging weight. Do longer pendulums swing faster? The longer the pendulum, whether it is a string, metal rod or wire, the slower the pendulum swings. Conversely the shorter the pendulum the faster the swing rate. On grandfather clocks with long pendulums or clocks with shorter ones, the swing rate depends upon the pendulum's length.

You can also ask why is it important to keep the amplitude of the swinging pendulum small?

If it is a pendulum, amplitude must be small because the "time period does not depend on amplitude" rule applies to pendulums only if it is exhibiting simple harmonic motion. So, when amplitude is kept small (allowing use of the sin?=? approximation), time period is independent of amplitude. In respect to this, can you use anything as a pendulum? Although you can purchase pendulums commercially, ranging from about $15 - $60, it's not hard to make one of your own. Typically, most people use a crystal or stone, but you can use any object that's got a bit of weight to it.