  We have designed, built and operated a physical pendulum which allows one to
demonstrate experimentally the behaviour of the pendulum under any equation of
motion for such a device for any initial conditions. All parameters in the
equation of motion can be defined by the user. The potential of the apparatus
reaches from demonstrating simple undamped harmonic oscillations to complex
chaotic behaviour of the pendulum. The position data of the pendulum as well as
derived kinematical quantities like velocity and acceleration can be stored for
later offline analysis.
