An analog simulation experiment to study free oscillations of a damped\n simple pendulum

The characteristics of drive-free oscillations of a damped simple pendulum\nunder sinusoidal potential force field differ from those of the damped harmonic\noscillations. The frequency of oscillation of a large amplitude simple pendulum\ndecreases with increasing amplitude. Many prototype mechanical simple pendulum\nhave been fabricated with precision and studied earlier in view of introducing\nthem in undergraduate physics laboratories. However, fabrication and\nmaintenance of such mechanical pendulum require special skill. In this work, we\nset up an analog electronic simulation experiment to serve the purpose of\nstudying the force-free oscillations of a damped simple pendulum. We present\nthe details of the setup and some typical results of our experiment. The\nexperiment is simple enough to implement in undergraduate physics laboratories.\n