Vibrations and Waves MP205, Assignment 4

Please hand in your solutions before 5pm Wednesday 11th March, starred questions will
be done out in tutorial and do not need to be handed up.
If you have any questions about this assignment, please ask your tutor,
N Ruairc, (uniruairc@thphys.nuim.ie), Office 1.6, Dept. Mathematical Physics.
Una

1. (a) Show that the frequency of vibration under adiabatic conditions of a column
of gas confined to a cylindrical tube, closed at one end, with a well-fitting but
freely moving piston of mass m is given by:
r
Ap
=
lm
.
(b) A steel ball of diameter 2cm oscillates vertically in a 12-liter glass tube containing air at atmospheric pressure (as pictured below). Verify that the period
of oscillation should be about 1 sec. (Assume adiabatic pressure change with
= 1.4. Density of steel = 7600kgm3 .)

* 2. The motion of a linear oscillator may be represented by means of a graph in which

x is shown on the x-axis and dx/dt on the y-axis. (ie a point on the graph will be
of the form (x, dx/dt)) The history of the oscillator is then a curve.
(a) Show that for an undamped oscillator this curve is an ellipse.
(b) Show (at least qualitatively) that if a damping term is introduced one gets a
curve spiraling into the origin.
3. Verify that x = Aet cos t is a possible solution of the equation
d2 x
dx
+
+ 02 x = 0,
2
dt
dt
and find and in terms of and 0 .
* 4. An object of mass 0.2 kg is hung from a spring whose spring constant is 80 N/m.
The object is subject to a resistive force given by bv, where v is its velocity in
meters per second.
(a) Set up the differential equation of motion for free oscillations of the system.

(b) If the damped frequency is 3/2 of the undamped frequency, what is the value
of the constant b?
(c) What is the Q of the system?

5. Many oscillatory systems, although the loss or dissipation mechanism is not analogous to viscous damping, show an exponential decrease in their stored average
energy with time E = E0 et . A Q for such oscillators may be defined using the
definition Q = 0 , where 0 is the natural angular frequency.
(a) When the note middle C on the piano is struck, its energy of oscillation
decreases to one half its initial value in about 1 sec. The frequency of middle
C is 256 Hz. What is the Q of the system?
(b) If the note an octave higher (512 Hz) takes about the same time for its energy
to decay, what is its Q?
(c) A free, damped harmonic oscillator, consisting of a mass m = 0.1kg moving
in a viscous liquid of damped coefficient b (Fviscous = bv), and attached to a
spring of spring constant k = 0.9N m1 , is observed as it performs oscillatory
motion. Its average energy decays to 1e of its initial value in 4 sec. What is the
Q of the oscillator? What is the value of b?
6. A U-tube has vertical arms of radii r and 2r, connected by a horizontal tube of
length ` whose radius increases linearly from r to 2r. The U-tube contains liquid
up to a height h in each arm. The liquid is set oscillating, and at a given instant
the liquid in the narrower arm is a distance y above the equilibrium level.

* (a) Show that the potential energy of the liquid is given by U = 58 gr2 y 2 .
* (b) Show that the kinetic energy of a small slice of liquid in the horizontal arm
(see the diagram) is given by
 2
r2 dx
1
dy
.
dK =
2
2 (1 + x/`)
dt
(Note that, if liquid is not to pile up anywhere, the product velocity cross
section must have the same value everywhere along the tube.)
(c) Using the result of part (b), show that the total kinetic energy of all the moving
liquid is given by

  2
5
dy
1
2
K = r ` + h
.
4
2
dt
(Ignore any nastiness at the corners.)
Hint: Work out the kinetic energy for the 3 sections separately.
(d) From (a) and (c) calculate the period of oscillations of ` = 5h/2.
Hint: Look at the standard form for the total Energy, can we manipulate our
expression into this form?