Solution to 1992 Problem 61


The angular frequency of a physical pendulum is
\begin{align*}\omega = \sqrt{\frac{M g d}{I}}\end{align*}
where I is the moment of inertia about the pivot point and d is the distance from the pivot to the center of mass.
If we let l denote the length of the pendulum and m denote the mass of the identical masses, then
\begin{align*}I_I &= 2 m l^2 \\I_{II} &= \frac{5 m l^2}{4} \\d_I &= l \\d_{II} &= \frac{3 l}{4}\end{align*}
Therefore,
\begin{align*}\frac{f_{II}}{f_I}= \frac{\omega_{II}}{\omega_I} = \frac{\sqrt{\displaystyle \frac{M g d_{II}}{I_{II}}}}{\sqrt{...
Therefore, answer (A) is correct.


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