Simulating pendulum with a for loop

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Laidog
Laidog on 26 Aug 2022
Commented: Voss on 26 Aug 2022
I was asked to simulate a pendulum with a for loop. However, I was struggling with the hold on and off command, and the animation I generated only consists of the x and y points, but the line that connects to moving x and y points remains at the original position. Any help or explanation will be appreicated.
Below is my code so far
L = 2;
g = 9.81;
squarerootvalue_gl = sqrt(g./L);
squarerootvalue_lg = sqrt(L./g);
T = 2 .* pi .* squarerootvalue_lg;
t = 0:0.01:T;
theta = pi./3 .* cos(squarerootvalue_gl*t);
x = L .* sin(theta);
y = L .* (1 - cos(theta));
A = [0 x];
B = [L y];
figure
line(A,B)
hold on
axis equal
for i = 1:length(t)
plot (A(i),B(i),'b.', 'MarkerSize', 10)
drawnow
end

Answers (1)

Voss
Voss on 26 Aug 2022
Notice that in each iteration of your loop you plot one point: (A(i),B(i)). That's why only the end of the pendulum shows up. If you want to show the entire pendulum moving, you have to plot two points - the other one being the fixed point at the top of the pendulum, (0,L), which is also (A(1),B(1)).
L = 2;
g = 9.81;
squarerootvalue_gl = sqrt(g./L);
squarerootvalue_lg = sqrt(L./g);
T = 2 .* pi .* squarerootvalue_lg;
t = 0:0.01:T;
theta = pi./3 .* cos(squarerootvalue_gl*t);
x = L .* sin(theta);
y = L .* (1 - cos(theta));
A = [0 x];
B = [L y];
figure
temp = [min(A) max(A)];
axis([temp 1+temp]);
p = line(NaN, NaN, 'Color','b', 'Marker','.', 'MarkerSize', 10);
for i = 2:length(t)
set(p,'XData',A([1 i]),'YData',B([1 i]));
drawnow
end
  4 Comments
Laidog
Laidog on 26 Aug 2022
I don't know how to upload my animation here, but when I run it, it lasted less than 1 second, and it didn't even swing past the origin. I am just confused what's wrong.
Voss
Voss on 26 Aug 2022
Post your code as it is now.

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