The simplest mechanical oscillating system is a weight attached to a linear spring subject to only weight and tension. Such … See more

In two or three dimensions, harmonic oscillators behave similarly to one dimension. The simplest example of this is an isotropic oscillator, where the restoring force is proportional to the displacement from equilib… See more

All real-world oscillator systems are thermodynamically irreversible. This means there are dissipative processes such as friction or electrical resistance which continually convert some of the energy stored in th… See more

In addition, an oscillating system may be subject to some external force, as when an AC circuit is connected to an outside power source. In this case the oscillation is said to be driven.
The simple… See more

The harmonic oscillator and the systems it models have a single degree of freedom. More complicated systems have more degrees of freedom, for example, two masses and three springs (each mass being attac… See more

In physics, a system with a set of conservative forces and an equilibrium point can be approximated as a harmonic oscillator near equilibrium. An example of this is the Lennard-Jones potential, where the potenti… See more

As the number of degrees of freedom becomes arbitrarily large, a system approaches continuity; examples include a string or the surface of a body of water. Such systems have (in the classical limit) an infinite number … See more