The Compound Pendulum in Intermediate Laboratories and Demonstrations.

A student laboratory course on the motion of the compound pendulum is described. The course is suited for physics and engineering students in their first year and requires a background in mechanics and mathematics corresponding to a one‐semester course in these disciplines. The purpose of this course is to present a system to the students which can be approached experimentally and to some extent theoretically using elementary methods, and hence allow the students to practice their newly acquired knowledge. All the experimental results presented here are obtained by the students using a simple and readily fabricated version of the compound pendulum.