Analysis of a simple pendulum driven at its suspension point

To familiarize undergraduate students with the dynamics of a damped driven harmonic oscillator, a simple pendulum was set up and driven at its suspension point under different damping conditions. From the time domain analysis, the decay constant was estimated and used to predict the frequency response. The simple pendulum was then driven at a series of frequencies near the resonance. By measuring the maximum amplitude at each driving frequency, the frequency response was determined. With one free parameter, which was determined under the first damping condition, the predicted frequency responses showed good agreement with the measured frequency responses under all damping conditions