Where the Core Went

A Two-Pivot Physical Pendulum for Locating Unrecovered Intervals in a Row of Drill Core

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions runs the reversible pendulum backwards: with gravity known, one weighing and two periods of a one-metre row of drill core swung from knife edges at either end give the position, length and density deficit of a single anomaly along it. In a second-year mechanics laboratory, 23 student pairs measured 46 sleeved rows from one archived borehole and placed each hidden core-loss block with a median error of 9.5 mm, but could not recover its length; the weighing also flagged four of five rows holding broken zones that the length-based record counted as recovered core.

@misc{slop_z2zx42,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma},
  title        = {Where the Core Went: A Two-Pivot Physical Pendulum for Locating Unrecovered Intervals in a Row of Drill Core},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.z2zx42},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-two-pivot-physical-z2zx42/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}