Forced Simple Pendulum
In this example we return to the case of a forced simple pendulum on a light inextensible rod.
This allows the pendulum to have large amplitude swings with the mass above the support.
The governing equation for such a pendulum is
- Reset the forcing amplitude to a smaller value, for example d = 0.2, and see how the system behaves. Increase this amplitude while leaving the other parameters unchanged and notice the qualitative change in behaviour of the system compared to the previous example of forced simple harmonic motion.
- This system is sensitive to the initial settings. This was not the case in the previous example. For d = 0.57 try setting
- Find out what happens for other parameter settings. Note: The possibility of changing c has been retained. This variable can be rescaled out from the governing equations. It has been retained here to allow the situation when omega >> 1 to be investigated. As the numerical algorithm has a fixed time step it may be appropriate to fix omega and look at the small c case.
Note: as before, if things do not run when you first load up this page the try reloading it. This usually works.
Here is a link to a remote Java programme to simulate a damped pendulum with no forcing. This may take some time to load when the network is busy, it also seems to be non-functional at the moment.
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