Before you read this post, I suggest you read post 17.17. In post 18.8 we saw the problems that unwanted motion of bridges could cause. Another example of unwanted motion is the sudden jolt that we experience when a vehicle goes over a bump. Fortunately, most vehicles are fitted with shock-absorbers to remove the effect… Continue reading 18.9 Damping and muscles

In posts 18.6 and 18.7, we saw that a simple pendulum, consisting of a small object hanging by a light string of length L, will swing backwards and forwards with a frequency of f = (1/2π)(g/L)1/2 where g is the magnitude of the earth’s gravitational field (post 16.16). This statement about frequency is equivalent to… Continue reading 18.8 Natural frequency and resonance

In post 18.6, we saw how the motion of a simple pendulum could be explained by it conserving mechanical energy. This explanation shows that the pendulum is an example of a simple harmonic oscillator – a system that does not dissipate mechanical energy and so continues to oscillate indefinitely. But this explanation involved a lot… Continue reading 18.7 The simple pendulum