A slowly evolving conical pendulum

Abstract

The idea of this work originally arose from a question pertaining to a laboratory experiment on circular motion in our departmental lab manual. The experiment itself involves rotating a bob along a horizontal circle (Figure 1), where the tension in the string attached to the bob provides the centripetal acceleration of the bob, the string itself passing through a smooth vertical pipe. It is assumed that the rotation is fast enough for the effect of gravity to be neglected and therefore the orientation of the part of the string between the top end of the pipe and the bob can be taken to be horizontal. The abovementioned question enquires what happens to the speed of the bob in the case that the bottom end of the string is hand-held and pulled slowly so that the radius of the circular orbit decreases. The answer to the question is straightforward. Either a work-energy argument or an argument involving the conservation of angular momentum provides the same correct answer.