Education Technology


Damped and Driven Harmonic Motion

Activity Overview

Students explore the properties of waveforms representing damped and driven simple harmonic motion. First, they identify the functional form of the damping in a simple harmonic oscillator. Then, they discover the relationship between the driving frequency, the fundamental frequency, and the damping coefficient for a driven simple harmonic oscillator.

Key Steps

  • Image

    Students should open the TNS file and read the first three pages. Page 1.4 shows a graph of displacement vs. time for a damped simple harmonic oscillator. The variable m represents the damping coefficient for the oscillator. Students should vary m and observe the effects on the motion of the oscillator. Then, they should answer questions 1 and 2.