Consider a coffee mug hanging on a hook in a pantry. If the mug gets knocked, it oscillates back and forth like a pendulum until the oscillations die out.
A simple pendulum can be described as a point mass and a string. Meanwhile, a physical pendulum is any object whose oscillations are similar to a simple pendulum, but cannot be modeled as a point mass on a string because its mass is distributed over a larger area. The behavior of a physical pendulum can be modeled using the principles of...

An object's apparent weight is its weight measured by a spring balance at its location. It is different from its true weight, the force with which the Earth pulls it, because of the Earth's rotation. Mathematically, an object's apparent weight equals its true weight minus the centripetal force that keeps it in a circular motion along with the Earth's surface every 24 hours.
The difference between the true and apparent weights is proportional to the square of the Earth's...

True weight is the measure of the gravitational force acting on an object. However, if the object accelerates, its measured weight is different from its true weight. Similar observations can be made when the object is submerged in water. An object's weight in water is its apparent weight, which is equal to the difference between its true weight and the buoyant forces.
Consider a person standing on a bathroom scale inside an elevator. If the scale is accurate at rest, its reading equals the...

If a driven oscillator needs to resonate at a specific frequency, then very light damping is required. An example of light damping includes playing piano strings and many other musical instruments. Conversely, to achieve small-amplitude oscillations as in a car's suspension system, heavy damping is required. Heavy damping reduces the amplitude, but the tradeoff is that the system responds at more frequencies. Speed bumps and gravel roads prove that even a car's suspension system is not...

According to Newton's law of gravitation, the gravitational force on a body is proportional to its mass. According to Newton's second law of motion, the acceleration produced by an external force is inversely proportional to the force. Hence, the acceleration of an object under an external force of gravitation is independent of its mass.
The acceleration of an object close to the Earth, because of the Earth's gravitational pull, is called the acceleration due to gravity. It is...