potentiality - Unit 8

To blow off steam from a tough day of physics, I went to go work out at my gym after school. During my speed bag lesson, I noticed that there was a pendulum right before my eyes! The speed bag located on a hook (to allow the bag go back and forth) was actually a pendulum! This unit was about work and to understand it, a pendulum was used to show how work is neither created nor destroyed. Where the pendulum lays when no one has touched it, is the equilibrium point. We can call this 0m, and nowhere on the pendulum no matter how it is pushed can go past the equilibrium point. When the weight of the pendulum is brought up above the ground at a certain point and released, the weight should go back and forth and never go higher than the dropping point. When the weight of the pendulum is suspended in the air, it has potential energy, because there is distance for the force of the ball to come down. Because it isn't at its equilibrium point, it has more than 0 potential energy. When the weight is released, the potential energy decreases as the kinetic energy increases (an inverse relationship). When the pendulum is swinging back and force, the equilibrium point is when it'd be going the fastest because there is no force working against it/for it. If you had the same situation (suspending a pendulum above the ground) but pushed the weight of the pendulum forward, no longer will it return to the same spot. It will go back and forth faster, and end up higher than the dropping point. In this video of me speed bag boxing, I am putting energy into the pendulum to make it go back and forth. Because I hit it with a great amount of energy (and the weight is very light) the bag goes back and forth quickly, and hits either side of the top of the pendulum.