Lesson Plan: Free and Forced Oscillations
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to describe the effect of a forcing frequency on an oscillation amplitude and how amplitude decreases due to dissipation.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- define a free oscillation as the oscillation of an oscillator resulting from releasing the oscillator from a position where its displacement from its equilibrium position is nonzero,
- define the natural frequency of an oscillator as the frequency of its free oscillation,
- define a forced oscillation as the oscillation of an oscillator resulting from the continuous action of an applied force acting at a frequency independent of the natural frequency of the oscillator, known as the driving frequency,
- recognize that the greatest amplitude of forced oscillation occurs for forced oscillations that have a driving frequency equal to the natural frequency of the oscillator,
- recall that the term resonance is used to refer to the forced oscillation of an oscillator with the greatest amplitude,
- recall qualitatively the shape of the graph of amplitude of oscillation against the driving frequency for a forced oscillator,
- recall qualitatively the shape of the graph of amplitude of oscillation against time for a free oscillator that is overdamped, underdamped, or critically damped.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- simple harmonic motions.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- equations of resonance of oscillation,
- equations of damped simple harmonic motion.
