A Spaceship Captain Lands on an Unknown Planet

Short Answer

A spaceship captain lands on an unknown planet. Before venturing forth, he needs to find out the acceleration due to gravity on that planet. All he has available to him is some thin light string, a stopwatch, and a small 2.75-kg metal ball (it was a rough landing). So he lets the ball swing from a 1.5-m length of the string, starting at rest, and measures that it takes 1.9 s for it to swing from the place where he released it to the place where it first stops as it reverses direction. What is the acceleration due to gravity on this planet?