THE COMPOUND PENDULUM AND THE COMPOSITION OF VIBRATIONS
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Pendulous motion must now be studied in other forms besides that of the simple pendulum, which consists of a weight and a cord. Any body rotating about an axis may be made to oscillate by gravity. A body thus vibrating is called a compound pendulum. The ideal form, which consists of an indefinitely small weight attached to a perfectly flexible and imponderable string, is an abstraction which can only be approximately imitated in nature. It follows that every pendulum used in our experiments is strictly speaking compound.