Newtonian Mechanics - part 2

L Del Debbio, University of Edinburgh

February 11, 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.)
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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 2 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

Exercise 2.1
Let us now integrate the equations of motion for the harmonic oscillator, again making use of the initial conditions to determine the integration constants. The equation of motion is: x (t ) + x (t ) = 0 . You can readily check, by taking two derivatives with respect to time, that sin( t ) and cos( t ) are both solutions of the equation above. Because the equation is linear, any linear combination of sine and cosine is also a solution. Check this statement by substituting: x (t ) = A cos( t ) + B sin( t ) into the equation of motion. The velocity of the system at all times is given by: v (t ) = A sin( t ) + B cos( t ) . If the position and the velocity are known at a given time t0 then we can nd A and B . Let us illustrate this by an example; we shall consider the initial conditions: x (0) = x0 v (0) = v0 We obtain: x0 = A , v0 = B . A and B are found by solving the above equations, and the state of the system is completely determined.
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Exercise 2.2

Dimensional analysis is a useful tool to check that equations make sense from the point of view of the physics that they are supposed to describe. Let us denote the dimensions of a quantity by square brackets, e.g. masses are measured in kilograms: [m] = kg . The force f is measured in newtons (N): [f ] = mathrmN = kg ms [k ] =
2 2

f 2 = kg s , x k 2 =s . m

Hence is measured in s1 , it is a frequency.