How can a pendulum be used to model wave motion?

Can someone explain to me how a pendulum can be used to model wave motion?How can a pendulum be used to model wave motion?Simple! imagine a pen or writing implement attached to the bottom of a swinging pendulum pointing downward. That pen is now swinging back and forth attached to our pendulum and now the pen is in contact with a roll of paper that is scrolling across at a moderate rate of speed underneath at a right angle to the pendulum's swinging path beneath the pen. The line drawn on our moving paper path by the pen will draw a sinusoidal wave pattern. The waveform will cycle above the middle graph line then below it and over and over. The movement of the scrolling graph paper adds a recorded temporal element to a just swinging pendulum. Sinusoidal waves are prevalent wherever alternating current or cyclic electromagnetic forces are present. Examples of this are, a/c electricity like is delivered to our homes as electrical power, radio waves also have this wave property, even visible light along with a particle function has a wave function as well. And that light frequency can be presented as...you guessed it, a sine wave!

Here is a link to a image I made and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I won't need to type here too much longer! I hope this has answered your question to your satisfaction.



http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd57/鈥?/a>How can a pendulum be used to model wave motion?I would have to assume that it is related to the momentum of the pendulum.How can a pendulum be used to model wave motion?A pendulum is a physical application of wave motion, there's almost no difference at all. If you were to track the movement of a pendulum left and right of center (neglect friction), and then plot the displacement of the pendulum on a graph it would look exactly like a sine wave.