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Explore the relationship between the Period, acceleration due to gravity, the length of the string, mass, and spring constants during simple harmonic motion.

This module assumes perfect harmonic motion (small angle approximation), no air resistance, ideal spring, etc. One thing that can't be altered is the initial amplitude of the spring (maybe if I find time - but with the "ideal approximation" nothing would change).

This demo runs under "real time" so if your computer is bogged down, the movement may not be smooth. Also, the way that real time is calculated may vary by as much as two percent on different computer systems. Since Shockwave in general slows down the system (at least on my trusty old Mac), try to avoid moving the mouse while doing the demo.


This was done by Raman Pfaff. If you would like more information, please contact me at pfaff@explorescience.com