Learning Mechanical Vibrations with Wolfram Mathematica

Abstract

Mechanical vibrations as subject can be found within many Engineering and Science Degrees. To achieve that the students understand the mathematics and its physical interpretation is the objective we should get as docents. In this paper we describe how to create a simple graphical model of a single degree of freedom vibrating system allowing us to visualize concepts like above concepts damping, resonance or forced vibrations. For that, we use the popular symbolic software Wolfram Mathematica with which, without an excessive programming complexity, we can obtain a very satisfactory visual model capable to move itself, controlled by parameters. In addition, the model incorporates the curve-response, something that links the mathematical results with reality.