I have a rather ambitious student who, for a Senior project, is attempting to
analyze the motion of a driven damped pendulum. We have gone through the more
simple case of a mass on a spring found in most texts.
He has developed a 2nd order differential (using Newton's 2nd law) to describe the
motion and is now attempting to solve it. Does anyone have any ideas for arriving
at a mathematical expression for the pendulum's angular displacement as a function
of time? (I have plenty of ideas, but won't bore you with the details ... yet.)
- Jim
_ . . _ _ _ _ . . . _ . . . _ _
James A. Currie Weston High School
curriej@meol.mass.edu Science Department
Phone (781) 899-0620 x7146 444 Wellesley St.
Fax (781) 647-1851 Weston, MA 02193
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I have a rather ambitious student who, for a Senior project,
is attempting to analyze the motion of a driven damped pendulum.
We have gone through the more simple case of a mass on a spring found in
most texts.
<P>He has developed a 2nd order differential (using Newton's 2nd law) to
describe the motion and is now attempting to solve it. Does anyone
have any ideas for arriving at a mathematical expression for the pendulum's
angular displacement as a function of time? (I have plenty of ideas,
but won't bore you with the details ... yet.)