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Does air resistance increase or decrease the period of a simple pendulum?

madlad
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  • A simple search gives : https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=73856 –  Jun 15 '19 at 08:22
  • How can you define a period for a motion which is not periodic? – eranreches Jun 15 '19 at 08:47
  • @eranreches For damped simple harmonic motion where the displacement is $x = Ae^{-\beta t}\cos \omega t$, the period is defined to be $2\pi/\omega$. This corresponds to a "common sense" idea of the period if the damping is small, and is consistent with the definition when $\beta = 0$. – alephzero Jun 15 '19 at 09:08

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You can see that air resistance increases the period by a common-sense argument, without doing any maths.

Suppose the mass is at its maximum position, and moves to the central position in time $t$. If there is air resistance, the speed of movement of the mass will be less because the air resistance slows it down, and therefore $t$ will be larger.

alephzero
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