ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we encountered a number of energy conserving physical systems that exhibit simple harmonic oscillation about a stable equilibrium state. One of the main features of such oscillation is that, once excited, it never dies away. However, the majority of the oscillatory systems that we encounter in everyday life suffer some sort of irreversible energy loss while they are in motion-due, for instance, to frictional or viscous heat generation. We would, therefore, expect oscillations excited in such systems to eventually be damped away. Let us examine an example of a damped oscillatory system.
