A Baby Bottle Harmonic Oscillator If you performed the previous lab experiment, you und...

A Baby Bottle Harmonic Oscillator

If you performed the previous lab experiment, you undoubtedly saw that harmonic oscillators are everywhere. Here is a harmonic oscillator that one of the authors discovered late one night.

Consider a U-shaped tube or pipe partially filled with fluid. (For example, a common design of baby bottle has the shape shown in Figure 3.68.)

If held upright, the level of fluid will come to rest at an equal height on each side of the bottle. If we tip the bottle quickly to one side, then return it to level, there will be more fluid in one side than in the other. Gravity pulling on this extra fluid will provide a restoring force, pushing the system back toward the rest position where both sides are at an equal level.

Your report: Address each of the three questions above in the form of a short essay. In Part 1 carefully describe the relationship between the forces and the differential equation model. In Part 2 describe the experiments you performed to obtain data and the computations necessary for computing the coefficients in the harmonic oscillator equation from your data. In Part 3 discuss any discrepancies between your data and the predictions of the model.

Buy or borrow such a baby bottle and observe it. Estimate the natural period of the oscillations and the rate of decay of the amplitude of the oscillations. Use the observations to estimate the parameter values for the harmonic oscillator equation model.