The swinging Atwood system:
This system comprises two masses (the pendulum, with mass 𝑚, which is allowed to swing freely and counterweight with mass 𝑀 which can only move up and down. These are connected by an inextensible, massless string, suspended on two frictionless pulleys of zero radius. Additionally the pendulum can swing freely around its pulley without colliding with the counterweight.One
Introduction
The Swinging Atwood System is made up of two masses that are connected by an inextensible, massless string over two frictional pulleys of zero radius. The mass, m is a simple pendulum and the counterweight has a mass, M that is greater than m. The pendulum can swing freely without colliding with the counterweight, but the counterweight is restricted to only being able to move up and down.
In our notebook, we start with the simple pendulum with mass, m. We choose some initial parameters such as the initial angle, velocity, lengths of the string and value of the masses and use a Python library to solve some differential equations. This allows us to plot up graphs to represent the change in the angle and the angular velocity against time. We can also draw up phase plots, which display the