Solving the Damped Harmonic Oscillator

Rhett Allain
9 min readMar 8, 2024
Photo: Rhett Allain. Setting up the damped harmonic oscillator

Maybe you have a solution for the harmonic oscillator. One example would be a horizontal mass on a frictionless surface connected to an ideal spring. It’s super important physics problem that shows up in many different places. If you need a review, I have you covered in this previous post.

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Rhett Allain

Physics faculty, science blogger of all things geek. Technical Consultant for CBS MacGyver and MythBusters. WIRED blogger.