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    Harmonic Oscilator Lecture Notes

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    danger99
    The document summarizes key aspects of harmonic oscillators: 1) Hooke's law describes the restoring force on a particle attached to a spring, leading to a differential equation of motion that can be solved to give oscillations. 2) For an oscillator initially at rest at position x0, the solution is x(t) = x0cos(ωt), where ω is the frequency of oscillations. 3) The energy of the oscillator remains constant over time as the potential and kinetic energies periodically exchange values while maintaining a constant sum.

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    Harmonic Oscilator Lecture Notes

    Uploaded by

    danger99
    33 views5 pages
    The document summarizes key aspects of harmonic oscillators: 1) Hooke's law describes the restoring force on a particle attached to a spring, leading to a differential equation of motion that can be solved to give oscillations. 2) For an oscillator initially at rest at position x0, the solution is x(t) = x0cos(ωt), where ω is the frequency of oscillations. 3) The energy of the oscillator remains constant over time as the potential and kinetic energies periodically exchange values while maintaining a constant sum.

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    The document summarizes key aspects of harmonic oscillators: 1) Hooke's law describes the restoring force on a particle attached to a spring, leading to a differential equation of motion that can be solved to give oscillations. 2) For an oscillator initially at rest at position x0, the solution is x(t) = x0cos(ωt), where ω is the frequency of oscillations. 3) The energy of the oscillator remains constant over time as the potential and kinetic energies periodically exchange values while maintaining a constant sum.

    Copyright:

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
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    33 views5 pages

    Harmonic Oscilator Lecture Notes

    Uploaded by

    danger99
    The document summarizes key aspects of harmonic oscillators: 1) Hooke's law describes the restoring force on a particle attached to a spring, leading to a differential equation of motion that can be solved to give oscillations. 2) For an oscillator initially at rest at position x0, the solution is x(t) = x0cos(ωt), where ω is the frequency of oscillations. 3) The energy of the oscillator remains constant over time as the potential and kinetic energies periodically exchange values while maintaining a constant sum.

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    of 5

    Newtonian Mechanics - part 2

    L Del Debbio, University of Edinburgh

    January 23, 2014

    Harmonic oscillators

    Harmonic oscillator

    One-dimensional point-like system: particle attached to a spring. Force acting on the particle is given by Hookes law: f = kx . Newtons law yields a dierential equation for x (t ): kx = m d2 x dt 2

    Introducing 2 = k /m, the equation of motion can be rewritten in a more familiar form: x + x = 0. The most general solution to this equation is: x (t ) = A cos( t ) + B sin( t ) , where A and B are constants determined by the initial conditions of the system. Exercise 2.1 provides an explicit example. The solution of the equation of motion shows that is the frequency of the oscillations. You can check that indeed it has the right dimensions! (See Exercise 2.2.)
    2

    Motion of the oscillator


    Let us consider the case: x (0) v (0) then the solution of the equation of motion is: x (t ) = x0 cos( t ) . Here is a sketch of the solution x (t ) for t [0, 10], x0 = 2, and = 1: = x0 , = 0.

    Check that you understand the mathematical features of this solution, and their physical interpretation. Taking the derivative of x (t ) with respect to t , compute the velocity of this system. You may nd it useful to sketch the velocity in a graph similar to the one above for x (t ).

    Energy conservation
    The potential energy is dened by the relations: f = dV . dx

    Note that the derivative is taken with respect to x , NOT with respect to time. Hence for the harmonic oscillator: V = 1 1 2 2 kx = m x . 2 2

    You can check this relation, by taking the derivative of V with respect to x . At t = 0, the system is at rest (v = 0), the only energy is potential energy: E0 = V (x0 ) = and clearly T = 0. Using the solution x (t ), we can compute the potential and kinetic energies for all times - not just t = 0. 2 1 1 sin2 ( t ) T = 2 mx (t )2 = 2 m 2 x0 2 1 1 V = 2 m 2 x (t )2 = 2 m 2 x0 cos2 ( t ) Using the fact that cos2 ( ) + sin2 ( ) = 1, for all values of , we nd that for all values of t : E = i.e. energy is conserved. 1 2 2 m x0 = E0 2 1 2 2 m x0 . 2

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