Determining the Viscosity of a Liquid Using a Simple Pendulum

Viscosity is defined as the measure of internal friction of a fluid. It is the property that restricts
the flow of the fluid. With the help of a simple pendulum, we measured the viscosity of three fluids-
water, castor oil and glycerin. To do this, we used two models, Stokes law and Landau Lifshitz
law. In both the methods, we applied the basic principles of classical mechanics. Using the above
mentioned laws and by tracking the oscillations of the pendulum in the fluid, using a software called
tracker, we modelled an equation. Solving this equation enabled us to find the viscosity of the
sample fluids.

I. MOTIVATION

Viscosity is an extremely important property of a fluid.

Knowing the viscosity of a fluid is essential in many fields
of life. For instance, transportation of fluids, especially
liquids, through pipelines depends heavily on the viscos-
ity of the fluid. The liquid flow is controlled by this
property. Also, the viscosity of a lubricant oil is one of
its characteristic properties- a high viscosity prevents the
lubricant from flowing and a low viscosity doesnt facili-
tate lubrication. In addition, a proper viscosity is vital
in processes such as spraying and surface coating. Vis-
cosity is heavily used even in the food industry, mainly
when liquid media like syrups are required to be pumped
through pipelines for various purposes. Because of its
various uses, we tried to device a model through which
viscosity of a fluid can be determined, using a simple
pendulum.
FIG. 1. The forces acting on a pendulum immersed in a liquid

II. INTRODUCTION
Viscosity is the property of a fluid that restricts its
flow. When a simple pendulum is suspended in a fluid,
damped oscillation takes place. This damping is caused
by the drag force of the fluid, which in turn depends on
its viscosity. We set up an experiment where we sus-
pended a pendulum in a liquid medium and recorded its
oscillations. Using the video, we tried finding the viscos-
ity based on the extent of damping seen and the behavior
of the curve of the oscillations of the pendulum.
III. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
The buoyant force is given by,
Fb = ρ.g.V
where ρ is the density of the fluid and V is the volume
of the water displaced which is equivalent to the volume
of the spherical bob(V= 16 .π.d3 ,where d is the diameter
of the pendulum,).
Stoke’s law states that drag force acting on a spherical
object immersed in a liquid when the Reynold’s number,
Re << 1, is given by the following equation.
Fd = 3π.d.µ.v

When a pendulum is immersed in a liquid, there are
various forces acting on it, namely gravitational force,
drag force of the liquid and buoyant force, as shown in
Fig. 1. From the free body diagram of the pendulum,
the forces when resolved give the following equation.
mgsinθ − Fb sinθ − Fd = ma
where m is the mass of the pendulum, g is the ac-
celeration due to gravity, Fb is the bouyant force, Fd is
the drag force and a is the tangential acceleration of the
pendulum.
where d is the diameter of the pendulum, v is its tangen-
tial velocity and µ is the viscosity of the fluid.
However, this law is not always applicable. It breaks
down and its accuracy reduces when the object is large
and fast moving that it causes turbulence in the flow, its
motion is uniform, its not spherical.This law also requires
the reynolds number to be very small to tackle this prob-
lem, we used a second approach using Landau-Lifshitz
law. From this law, the drag force, Fd on the object
immersed in a fluid is given by the following equation.
d dx 3 d d2 x
Fd = 3π.d.µ(1 + ) + π.d2 (1 + )ρf δ 2
2δ dt 4 9δ dt
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where ρf is the density of the fluidq and δ is the penetra-

tion depth, which is given by δ = ρ2µ fω
, where ω is the
frequency of the oscillations.
By substituting the values of Fd , from the information
mentioned above, we arrived at two second order differen-
tial equations, one using Stoke’s law and the other using
Landau-Lifshitz model.
From Stoke’s law, we arrived at the following equation
d2 x 3π.d.µ dx g m − ( 16 ρπ.d3 )
2
+ + x=0 (1)
dt m dt L m
where L is the length of the inextensible string and ρ
is the density of the fluid. FIG. 2. The Experimental Setup in Castor oil
and from Landau-Lifshitz model, we got the equation
written below.
d V. DATA AND ANALYSIS
d2 x dx 3π.d.µ(1 + 2δ )
g ρf πd2
+ + x (m − )=0
dt2 dt m + 34 πd2 (1 + d
L
9δ ρf δ)
6
(2) From our experiment, we gathered the following data
We further generalised the equation (1) to the form: related to the displacement of the pendulum from the
mean position and time in each of the media.

d2 x dx
+ 2b + ωo2 .x = 0
dt2 dt
m−( 1 ρπ.d3 )
where b = 3π.d.µ 2
2m and ωo = L
g 6
m .
Equation (2) was generalised to the form:

dx dx
+ 2b + ω02 x = 0
dt2 dt
where
3 d g ρf πd2
2 π.d.µ(1 + 2δ ) L (m − 6 )
b= and ω02 =
m + 34 πd2 (1 + d
9δ) ρf δ m 3 2
+ 4 πd (1 + 9δd
)ρf δ

On solving the differential equation we found a rela-

tionship between the displacement of the pendulum and
time. The equation obtained is as follows:

x(t) = Ae−bt cos(ω.t + φ)

p
where A and φ are unknown constants and ω =
IV. EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES
We suspended a pendulum of mass, m, through an
inextensible string, of length L, which was then immersed
in the fluid under study. The fluids under our study
were water, castor oil and glycerine. We displaced the
pendulum such that it made a small angle, θ with the
vertical, or the mean position of the string and left it
for it to oscillate. We recorded the oscillations of the
pendulum over a period of time, which we later analyzed
through a modelling tool called Tracker.
In our case, the mass of the pendulum was 0.096 kg and
its diameter is 0.0251 m.
ωo2 − b2
TABLE I. Data collected when the pendulum was immersed
in water
Using the data, we plotted a displacement-time curve
to track the motion of the pendulum. Through curve fit-
ting, we obtained the values of the unknown parameters
such as ω, φ, A and b. The curves are as shown below. In
the following curves, the blue line is the curve from the
experimental data whereas the orange line is the curve
that we sketched from our theoretical model. We tried
to fit the curve exactly, however, whenever this was not
possible, we took the parameters that fit the curve in the
beginning of the oscillations rather than towards the end
because a small disturbance in the beginning builds up
towards the end and causes a bigger error.
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were approximately as shown below.

A = 0.09, b = 2.5, ω = 4 and φ = 0

FIG. 3. Oscillations with water as the medium

TABLE II. Data collected when the pendulum was immersed
in Glycerine at a certain concentration

FIG. 4. Oscillation with glycerine as the medium

VI. RESULT AND CONCLUSION

TABLE III. Data collected when the pendulum was immersed The value of viscosity is hidden in the parameter ’b’.
in castor oil When Stoke’s law is used, then as mentioned earlier,
3π.d.µ
b=
From this method of curve fitting, we obtained the 2m
following approximate values for our parameters in water: and hence, the value of viscosity, µ can be calculated
A = −0.064, b = 0.22, ω = 5.25 and φ = 0 from the equation
2mb
The parameters for the oscillations of the pendulum in µ=
3πdµ
glycerine were approximately found to be as follows.
On using the Landau-Lifshitz model,
A = 0.083, b = 0.44, ω = 5.2 and φ = 0 3 d
2 π.d.µ(1 + 2δ )
b=
In the case of castor oil, the values of the parameters m + 34 πd2 (1 + d
9δ )ρf δ

FIG. 5. Oscillation with castor oil as the medium
from where µ can be calculated by substituting the rest
of the parameters that are known.
From our experiment, for water, the values of µ turned
out to be 0.18 and 0.05 using Stoke’s law and Landau-
Lifshitz model respectively.
Glycerine was diluted to a concentration of 63.5%. The
viscosity of this solution was found to be 0.36 using
Stoke’s law and 0.18 using Landau-Lifshitz model.
The viscosity of castor oil was calculated to be 2.02 and
2.28 from the two models respectively.
We observed that the viscosity was highest in castor
oil, which showed highest damping, followed by glycerine
solution, followed by water.
VII. ERROR ANALYSIS
Since Landau-Lifshitz model takes more factors into
account, the values we got through this would be closer
to the actual values.
The actual viscosity of water is 8.9 × 10−4
P ercentage Error = 5517%
The actual viscosity of the glycerine solution is 3.43 ×
10−3
P ercentage Error = 5147%
The actual viscosity of castor oil is 0.65
P ercentage Error = 250%
This amount of error is caused because the parameters
obtained through curve fitting in excel are only approx-
imate values. Also, the viscosity of the liquids depend
[1] Caluculus and Analytic Geometry by Thomas and Finney
4
on the temperature, hence their exact values cannot be
determined from the experiment
VIII. APPENDIX
As referred to in section IV, Tracker is a video analysis
and modelling tool, built on the open source physics java
framework, designed for physics education. It is a project
of Open Source Physics, hosted By comPADRE.
Some of the features of the software that were useful for
us are:
1. Tracking
• Manual and automated data tracking with po-
sition, velocity and acceleration overlays and
data
• Centre of mass tracks
• Interactive graphical vectors and vector sums
2. Video
• Free Xuggle video engine plays and records
most formats
• Video filters
• Video Properties dialog shows video dimen-
sions, path, frame rate, frame count, more.
3. Data generation and analysis
• Fixed or time-varying coordinate system scale,
origin and tilt
• Multiple calibration options: tape, stick, cali-
bration points and/or offset origin
• Switch easily to center of mass and other ref-
erence frames
• Data include units (SI metric units by default,
settable length and mass units)
• Protractors and tape measures provide easy
distance and angle measurements
• Define custom variables for plotting and anal-
ysis
4. Other
• Integrated searchable help and diagnostics
• Full undo/redo with multiple steps
[2] https://physlets.org/tracker/
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[3] https://www.compadre.org/portal/Collections.cfm [5] Appendix to the article Pendulum Underwater Viscosity

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes%27law by J. Leme and A. Oliveira