Activities
- Measure the period of the motion for the given initial conditions.
- Drag with the mouse the ball to a new position and measure the period again. What do you observe?
- Set the mass of the ball to several different values (keeping k constant) and plot in your notebook the observed period versus the mass.
- Do the same for the elastic constant of the spring, k.
- Would you dare to provide an explicit formula for the dependence of the period with respect to the mass and k?
- Should the total energy of the model be preserved?
- Why do you think the total energy of the simulation slowly increases? (Hint: choose a better solver for the equations, such as Runge-Kutta, and check again.)