The pendulum swings under the influence of gravity, a linear damping torque, and a periodic driving torque with an adjustable amplitude. Explore the behavior for different values of the drive amplitude.
As suggested by Giordano and Nakanishi, the damping constant is 0.5 and the angular frequency of the driving torque is 2/3, in natural units where g/L = 1.
This simulation is also intended as a simple demonstration of how to do animated graphics and GUI controls in HTML5/JavaScript.
Created by Dan Schroeder, Physics Department, Weber State University.