A basic pendulum is a mass at the end of a string that swings back and forth. It seems simple, and it appears in most introductory physics textbooks. But it's not a trivial problem to solve for the ...

Nudge something away from where it was at rest, and often it will push back. And then overshoot. From atoms to bridges to wheeled luggage, much of the world is in simple harmonic motion Yesterday my ...

This is a requested post. Clearly, I do requests. The idea here is that I am going to give all the details needed to determine the equation of motion (and then model it) for a basic pendulum. Warning: ...

A Foucault pendulum is a simple device for observing the Earth's rotation. While such pendulums have been around for more than 150 years and are a staple of the modern science museum, they are ...

You've probably seen the famous pendulum demonstration—the one where the physics professor puts a bowling ball on a rope, holds it by her head, and lets it go, knowing it won't have enough energy to ...

French physicist Léon Foucault (1819–1868) is best known for developing the Foucault pendulum, a device that demonstrated once and for all that the Earth rotates. But he was also a master inventor, ...