A basic pendulum is a mass at the end of a string that swings back and forth. It seems simple, and it appears in most introductory physics textbooks. But it's not a trivial problem to solve for the ...

Nudge something away from where it was at rest, and often it will push back. And then overshoot. From atoms to bridges to wheeled luggage, much of the world is in simple harmonic motion Yesterday my ...

French physicist Léon Foucault (1819–1868) is best known for developing the Foucault pendulum, a device that demonstrated once and for all that the Earth rotates. But he was also a master inventor, ...