A computer controlled pendulum with position readout

We have designed, built and operated a physical pendulum which allows one to demonstrate experimentally the behaviour of the pendulum under any equation of motion for such a device for any initial conditions. All parameters in the equation of motion can be defined by the user. The potential of the apparatus reaches from demonstrating simple undamped harmonic oscillations to complex chaotic behaviour of the pendulum. The position data of the pendulum as well as derived kinematical quantities like velocity and acceleration can be stored for later offline analysis.