Earrings are everyday accessories for girls and as I was walking to Weinberg to suffer approximately 4 hours of brain torture for the SAT, I realized that the motion of my earrings relates to physics! As I walked, I noticed that my earrings move similarly to how a pendulum moves. Like a pendulum, my earrings swing back and forth in a harmonic motion between the negative maximum angle from the horizontal to the equilibrium position and to the positive maximum angle (sign refers to direction).
In addition, there are two forces acting on the dangling object: weight and tension of the connector. As I walked forward, the y-component of the dangling object's weight (mgcostheta)and the tension force (T) are equivalent as there is no movement along the y-axis. Thus, the only germane force is the x-component of the dangling objects' weight parallel to the x-axis (mgsintheta).
Finally, to connect the earrings' motion to our most recent chapter, the pendulum's trajectory can be described as an arc of a circle, where the connector is the radius of the circle, and the dangling object's velocity is tangential to the circle.
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