PHY245H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Sine Wave, Net Force, Damping Ratio
Document Summary
An oscillator whose amplitude of oscillations decrease over time. This forces us to use newton"s second law in a different way: We can use the discriminant above to predict the nature of the damping in the oscillation. It accounts for other forces interfering with an otherwise shm system (eg, friction, drag, etc. ) A numeric figure that describes the extent to which an oscillator is damped. That middle term is known as the damping force: We can use it to find something known as the damping coefficient: The damping coefficient is inversely proportional to mass. Not only does the damping coefficient appear in the exponential decay part of the equation, it can also be used to find the sinusoid frequency: An oscillator whose motions can be graphed as a sine wave with decreasing amplitude. Recall the three cases of the root for the characteristic polynomial of the differential equation: This is the case where the roots are complex.
