The experimental determination of the moment of inertia

Abstract

Accurate calculation of the moment of inertia of an irregular body is made difficult by the large number of quantities which must be measured. Trifilar suspensions are routinely used to measure the period of oscillation of the body in the horizontal plane. For accurate measurement the center of mass of the suspended object should be on the symmetry axis of the suspension. In this paper, we discuss the experimental determination of the moment of inertia with the help of the oscillation method. The procedure is described, the necessary calculations are derived and the relative importance of accuracy in different measurements is assessed. In addition to this we explore the error analysis in trifilar inertia measurements and the application of the moment of inertia method.