Activities

1. Measure the period of the motion for the given initial conditions.
2. Drag with the mouse the ball to a new position and measure the period again. What do you observe?
3. Set the mass of the ball to several different values (keeping k constant) and plot in your notebook the observed period versus the mass.
4. Do the same for the elastic constant of the spring, k.
5. Would you dare to provide an explicit formula for the dependence of the period with respect to the mass and k?
6. Should the total energy of the model be preserved?
7. Why do you think the total energy of the simulation slowly increases? (Hint: choose a better solver for the equations, such as Runge-Kutta, and check again.)