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The physical pendulum in an advanced undergraduate course in mechanics

Douglas, S. C., Harrison, D. M. and Shepherd, T. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6631-9968 (1994) The physical pendulum in an advanced undergraduate course in mechanics. Computers in Physics, 8 (4). pp. 416-419. ISSN 0894-1866

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Abstract/Summary

The physical pendulum treated with a Hamiltonian formulation is a natural topic for study in a course in advanced classical mechanics. For the past three years, we have been offering a series of problem sets studying this system numerically in our third-year undergraduate courses in mechanics. The problem sets investigate the physics of the pendulum in ways not easily accessible without computer technology and explore various algorithms for solving mechanics problems. Our computational physics is based on Mathematica with some C communicating with Mathematica, although nothing in this paper is dependent on that choice. We have nonetheless found this system, and particularly its graphics, to be a good one for use with undergraduates.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
ID Code:32966
Publisher:American Institute of Physics

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