| Student Manual |  Webcams are easily available and cheap every-day use items. This innovative experiment uses a webcam to monitor the oscillations of a body attached to a spring, negotiating simple harmonic motion. The effect of the viscous force of a liquid on the damping of the harmonic motion is also investigated. |
| Software Code | Harmonic |
| Sample Results | Undamped Damped |
| Troubleshoot Guide | No Image acquisition adapter available |
| Experiment Code | 1.1 |
| Version | 5th April 2023, 2023-v1 |
Further Readings and References
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Webcam as a measuring tool in the undergraduate physics laboratory
European Journal of Physics,http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0143-0807/20/2/004/pdf, L.F. Zonnetti et al., 85, 20, (1999). -
A demonstration of dry and viscous damping of an oscillating pendulum
European Journal of Physics,http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0143-0807/27/5/020/meta;jsessionid=64F04430A40CB697A44943AC970E3826.c3, S. Nedev, V.C. Ivanova, 1213, 27, (2006).
Pictorial Procedure
1. Provided apparatus
2. Webcam
3. A spring attached to the metre rule
4. Attaching a mass hanger to the spring
5. Adding weight in a mass hanger
6. Setup for observing free oscillations
7. Your M-files must be in the current directory of MATLAB
8. Image view for free oscillations
9. Placing mass-spring system into water
10. Setup for damped oscillations
11. Image view for damped oscillations
12. Cropped image view
13. Image processing view