Readings: Knight Chap 14 Objective: By the end of this recitation, you should be able to analyze the oscillation of a simple harmonic oscillator such as a pendulum (for small angles where = [g/l]) or a linear spring (where = [k/m]). Anything that is described by the equation ax = - 2 x is a simple harmonic oscillator with angular frequency = 2 f, where f = 1/T is the frequency of the oscillator in Hz (s-1) and T is the period in seconds. A simple harmonic oscillator behaves as: x(t) = xm cos( t + ), where is the phase of the oscillator (we'll set = 0 for this recitation). The simple harmonic oscillator has the important property that its amplitude (xm) and frequency are independent; thus, as the oscillator's amplitude decays, its frequency and period are not affected