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For a school project, I've been researching mass-spring-damper systems. For this I did an experiment in which I basically filmed a spring with a mass attached to it that went up and down and eventually stopped moving. Now I have to make a graph of this, but it's a very long video and the mass goes up and down so many times that it would take me hours to finish one graph (I need 9).

I was wondering if there is a program that either scans the video and makes a graph from this or a program that lets me put in a few timestamps with the amplitudes at those marks and creates the graph on its own. That would help me a lot since then I would only have to add in a few things. Does anyone know of a program like this?

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    $\begingroup$ This question appears to be about software recommendations rather than a physical concept. $\endgroup$
    – jng224
    May 18, 2022 at 14:59
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    $\begingroup$ I think you have just learned a very important lesson in experimental physics: Good data is almost always better than fancy analysis. Think through how you're going to get your data before you start the experiment. If you want the position, then measure position directly, or if you'll need to track the motion of something in a video, figure out how you're going to extract the information before you take the video (eg, paint some dots on the object). Etc. (Generally, to track a simple object, I'd use "blob detection" in OpenCV.) $\endgroup$
    – tom10
    May 18, 2022 at 16:21
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    $\begingroup$ @Jonas (and other close-voters): I don't think that this makes it out of scope, since we do allow questions on experimental physics and on resource recommendations. (I've added the latter tag.) $\endgroup$
    – Michael Seifert
    May 18, 2022 at 18:07

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The easy way to get a graph is to plot a function which predicts the motion. For a mass on a spring with damping that would be: x = A sin(ωt + ϕ) $e^{-bt}$. You would need to find constants, A, ω, and, b, that match your observed motion. Another option would be a numeric simulation of the motion on a computer (I'd use a spreadsheet). Best, video the motion with a meter stick in back of the mass, then step through the video frame by frame. Count frames to get the time, and observe the position at equal increments of time.

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