Mechanical Oscillators

There are many types of **mechanical oscillators**. We can find them everywhere around us including some parts of our human body. Some examples of simple mechanical oscillators are introduced here, such as a** simple pendulum**, where restoring force is **gravitational force**, a **spring** where restoring force is **force of the spring**; a **bending beam** where restoring force is **elasticity of the beam material** and a **torsion** of shaft with restoring force in **elasticity of the shaft material**. These oscillators show us simple harmonic motion.



**Simple harmonic motion** is any motion where an applied restoring force is proportional to the displacement and in the opposite direction of that displacement. Probably the most important pendulum experiments for understanding of **simple harmonic motion**, were those of the French physicist **Jean Bernard Leon Foucault**. Swinging a heavy iron ball from a wire more than 61 m in length, he was able to demonstrate that Earth rotates on its axis.