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Teardrop and heart orbits of a swinging Atwood's Machine

Nicholas B. Tufillaro

chao-dynarXiv:chao-dyn/9302006

Abstract

An exact solution is presented for a swinging Atwood's machine. This teardrop-heart orbit is constructed using Hamilton-Jacobi theory. The example nicely illustrates the utility of the Hamilton-Jacobi method for finding solutions to nonlinear mechanical systems when more elementary techniques fail.

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