Introduction Did you know that playground swings can provide a good lesson in physics—as well as lots of fun? The back-and-forth motion of a swing is an example of a pendulum. We see pendulums in ...

Along with gravimeters and torsion balances, pendulums can be used to measure gravitational force. The period oscillation of the pendulum can be used to measure gravitational acceleration, and in turn ...

Charles Sanders Peirce, a practicing scientist and proponent of philosophical pragmatism, began the gravity program of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in the early 1870s, at a time when his father ...