VIBRATIONS AND WAVES SEMESTER1, 2023/2024

1. PERIODIC MOTION AND SIMPLE HARMONIC MOTION (SHM)

1.1 Periodic Motion

• A periodic phenomenon is one that repeats at regular intervals.
• Examples of periodic events are an oscillating pendulum; the vibration of a
string; or the orbit of a planet about a star.

• In these examples we are often concerned with phenomena that are periodic in
time, the term period (T) to mean the separation in time between consecutive
repetitions of a given state of a physical system (e.g., every time all of the
position, velocity, and acceleration of a pendulum return to some previously
attained values).

• An oscillation is a periodic fluctuation in the value of a physical quantity

between two extremes, above and below equilibrium value. There are two basic
types of oscillation:

(i) Mechanical oscillation, which involves the bodily motion of physical

objects in space. For examples, the swinging of a pendulum, the distance
of a planet from any fixed point).

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(ii) Non-mechanical oscillation, involving periodic variations in the values

of physical properties, rather than spatial displacements explicitly. For
examples the oscillation of density and pressure in a sound wave, the
oscillation of voltage in an alternating-current (AC) electrical circuit, and
the oscillation of electric- and magnetic-field strengths in a light wave.

• In this course we will begin by focusing on mechanical oscillations: What are the
main features of such oscillations? How do we describe them and analyze them
mathematically? How do they apply to real physical systems?

• But the main physical concepts and the basic mathematical techniques that we
develop in the context of mechanical oscillations apply equally to non-
mechanical oscillations.

• Oscillations lead naturally to the idea of waves, as travelling or propagating

patterns of oscillatory disturbances.

• Energy is transported by waves, and energy plays a central role in our physical
understanding of the world and Universe around us.

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• An understanding of waves is key to many processes and phenomena in

various areas of physics from acoustics (the study of sound) and optics (light),
through to mechanics and dynamics (with engineering applications),
electromagnetism (light again; but also other forms of radiation) and general
relativity (gravity) and quantum mechanics (atomic- and subatomic-scale
physics).
• Let us consider a particularly simple example of periodic motion; that of a point
(a particle, a body, an object, etc.) traversing a circular path about the origin in
the (x, y) plane. This motion at some unspecified time t is illustrated in Figure
1.1.

Figure 1.1

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• Let us assume that the motion is in the counterclockwise direction at constant

speed. The “orbiting" point is always a distance A from the origin of the
coordinate system (x, y), and thus A is the radius of the circle shown.

• The line joining the origin to the instantaneous position of the point makes a
time-varying angle  (t ) to the x-axis in this set-up. We refer to  (t ) as the
phase. With this angle measured in radians, the arc-length s measuring the
distance along the circle from the positive x-axis to the point at time t is

(1.1)

• Here A has the usual units of length, and thus so does s(t). If the speed ds/dt is
constant, then the fact that A is constant implies that the time-derivative of the phase
is also constant:

(1.2)

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• As a result, the phase depends on time simply as

(1.3)

where  o is a constant of integration called the phase constant which is related

to the initial conditions of a particular system. That is,  = o at time t = 0; so the
phase constant keeps track of the state of the system when we decide to start
measuring or observing it.

• It is clear that the circular motion illustrated in Figure 1.1 is periodic; the phase
 (t ) is known for some specific time t. Then, for a later time (t + T), if  has
increased by exactly 2 radians then the point has returned to exactly the same
(x, y) position that it had at time t.

• This identifies the time interval T as the period in this example; and from
equation (1.3),

(1.4)

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• The expression in eq(1.4) has been relating to T and  by considering circular

motion, but in fact the result applies much more generally in the context of
oscillations.
• In general, for oscillatory motion with a period T, we can always talk about a
quantity
(1.5)
which is called the angular frequency.
• The “frequency" part of this name reflects the fact that   1 T , where 1 T = f is
the usual frequency of periodic motion, in cycles per second.

• The “angular" part of the name for  comes from multiplying f by 2

radians/cycle.

• As we have seen,  is the rate of change of the phase,  . If time is measured in

seconds, then the unit of T are obviously seconds, and  therefore has unit of
s-1 (sometimes called as rads-1).

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1.1.1 Displacement, Velocity and Acceleration

• By referring to Figure 1.1,

(1.6)

• Each of x and y varies between +A and –A (since the maximum and minimum
values of cos and sin are +1 and -1), with a period T = 2  (this is the time to
go from +A to –A and back again).

What are the velocity and acceleration as functions of time, in each of the x and y
directions?

• First, differentiate x once with respect to time:

(1.7)

• The notation x is convenient shorthand for dx dt , i.e., a single dot over a

quantity denotes the first time derivative of that quantity.

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• To evaluate eq(1.7) we need to find the derivative of a function (cos) of a

function ( t +  ) of time, which means that we need the chain rule. From
o

eq(1.3),  (t ) =  t +  , we write
o

(1.8)

• By rearranging and substituting back in the full expression for  as a function of

time and using the chain rule again to differentiate y as well, with respect to
time, gives

(1.9)

• Therefore, the velocities in the separate x and y directions also oscillate with the
same period T = 2  as the x and y displacements, but now between of +  A
and −  A .

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• By differentiating once more, using the chain rule in the same way, we find for the
accelerations,

(1.10)

• Once again, the accelerations oscillate with period T = 2  .The amplitude of

the oscillation in acceleration is  2 A .
• In eq(1.10), x has been introduced to represent d 2 x dt 2 , and y stands for
d 2 y dt 2 . In general, two side-by-side dots over a quantity denote the second
time derivative of that quantity.

• By putting eqs(1.6), (1.9) and (1.10) all together:

(1.11)

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• Some aspects of these two parallel sets of equations are:

(1) The only difference between the x and y equations is that the latter involve sin
when the former involve cos, and vice versa (plus a sign difference in the
velocities).
However, since
sin ( t + o ) +  2 = cos( t + o ) and cos( t + o ) +  2 = − sin( t + o ) , the
difference between x and y amounts is a constant difference of  2 radians
(= 90o, or one-quarter of a cycle) in their phases,  = ( t + o ) .

Put another way, we could still write y = A sin( t + o ) , as we have, but then
also write x = A sin( t +  o ) with a different phase constant  o = o +  2
in which case we would find x = + A cos( t +  o ) and x = − 2 A sin( t +  o ) .
Therefore, by using the relations for sin and cos of compound angles, these
equations are equivalent to the x-equations above when  o = o +  2 .

Thus, we can choose to write either x and y in terms of either sin or cos
without affecting the basic behavior of the displacements, velocities, and
accelerations (or the behavior of any other physical quantities derived from
these) as functions of time; whatever we choose, we just have to be self-
consistent, and use the correct phase constant.

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(2) If there are no forces acting on the orbiting particle in Figure 1.1 other than the
centripetal force maintaining the circular motion in the first place, then the total
energy of the particle is just its kinetic energy. If the particle mass is m, then

(1.12)

in which the last line follows from the fact that sin 2  + cos 2  = 1 for any angle  .

(3) Just as the sin-versus-cos difference between x and y means that these
displacements are out of phase by  2 rad, or 90o, or one-quarter of a cycle,
so too the difference between sin and cos in x versus x (or the similar
difference between y and y ) means that displacement and velocity are  2
rad out of phase (though they also have different amplitudes).

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That is, if we write x = A cos( t + o ) , then we could equally well manipulate

x = − A sin( t + o ) to write x = + A cos( t + o +  2) instead.
It can then be seen that the phase of velocity (i.e., the argument of the cosine)
is always different from the phase of displacement by exactly  2 rad.

In practical terms, being 90o out of phase means that when x is at a maximum
(x = +A, which happens for  t + o = 0, 2 , 4 ,) , then x = 0 [since sin(2 n ) =
0 for all integers n]. Also when x is a minimum (x = -A, for
 t + o =  , 3 , 5 ,) , then x = 0 . Conversely, when x is at its equilibrium or
average value of x = 0 (which happens for  t + o =  2, 3 2, 5 2, 7 2,),
then the velocity is at a minimum or maximum, x =  A .

(4) Similarly, the acceleration x is a further  2 rad out of phase with the velocity
x , and thus x is a full  radians (= 180o, or half a cycle) out of phase with the
displacement x.
Therefore, when the velocity is at a maximum or minimum, the acceleration is
0 (as is the displacement itself); and when the velocity is 0, the acceleration is
at one of the extremes   2 A .

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More specifically still, eqs(1.11) show immediately that when x is at its

maximum of +A, the acceleration is at its minimum x = − 2 A ; and when the
displacement is at the minimum x = - A, the acceleration is maximized,
x = + 2 A . All of this applies as well to y, y and y.

Therefore, the acceleration is proportional in magnitude and opposite in direction to

the displacement.

Mathematically, we have shown that if we begin with either of the two

equations (1.6) for displacement as a function of time,

Then, by comparing the first and third lines of eqs(1.11), the relationship
between the accelerations and displacement;

(1.13)

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Note that these equations involving x and y are now completely identical,
aside from the fact that the displacement is labelled as x in one and as y in the
other.

Again, the cos and sin forms that we have been working with for x and y are
effectively interchangeable and lead to a single equation for acceleration as a
function of displacement.

Table 1 lists the results for x, x and x at a few well-chosen phase angles.

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