[time-nuts] Pendulum clock suspension

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Sun Dec 10 17:14:34 EST 2017


> This puzzled me since yesterday as I discovered how the suspension of
> pendulum clocks is made, that is a springy plate.

There is less loss in a suspension like that than there would be in a pivot 
bearing.

The spring doesn't change parameters as it gets dirty or the oil dries out.

> -following the above, the lenght of the pendulum varies during a swing,

> Ok that we can neglect the above yet having an extremely good approximation,
> but is it conceptually right? 

With a constant length pendulum, there is a slight variation in the frequency 
with the height (width?) of the swing.  (I haven't done the math since 
college physics which was a long time ago.)

It would be interesting to see how much the length of a pendulum changes as 
the suspension spring bends and how much that changes the resonant frequency 
and how that compares with the length change due to temperature.  I suspect 
it's down in the noise.


-- 
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