Why don't pendulums work at sea?
Answers
The difficulty with pendulum clocks is because they were constructed based on the observation that - when subjected only to gravitational acceleration , the pendulum oscillate simple harmonically (only for small oscillations) with a characteristic time period. So, to be used as a clock, pendulums must be insulated from other sources of acceleration such as inertial forces. But on ocean-bound ships this condition is not guaranteed because the ship gets rocked constantly by the waves. That is what is meant by "pendulum clocks don't work at sea".
The difficulty with pendulum clocks is because they were constructed based on the observation that - when subjected only to gravitational acceleration , the pendulum oscillate simple harmonically (only for small oscillations) with a characteristic time period. So, to be used as a clock, pendulums must be insulated from other sources of acceleration such as inertial forces. But on ocean-bound ships this condition is not guaranteed because the ship gets rocked constantly by the waves. That is what is meant by "pendulum clocks don't work at sea".