Encyclopedia

Elastic pendulum

Concept in physics and mathematics

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors

2 min read
Source updated January 13, 2026

Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

In physics and mathematics, in the area of dynamical systems, an elastic pendulum (also called spring pendulum or swinging spring) is a physical system where a piece of mass is connected to a spring so that the resulting motion contains elements of both a simple pendulum and a one-dimensional spring-mass system. For specific energy values, the system demonstrates all the hallmarks of chaotic behavior and is sensitive to initial conditions. At very low and very high energy, there also appears to be regular motion. The motion of an elastic pendulum is governed by a set of coupled ordinary differential equations. This behavior suggests a complex interplay between energy states and system dynamics.

01Analysis and interpretation

The system is much more complex than a simple pendulum, as the properties of the spring add an extra dimension of freedom to the system. For example, when the spring compresses, the shorter radius causes the spring to move faster due to the conservation of angular momentum. It is also possible that the spring has a range that is overtaken by the motion of the pendulum, making it practically neutral to the motion of the pendulum.

Lagrangian

The spring has the rest length $\ell _{0}$ and can be stretched by a length $x$ . The angle of oscillation of the pendulum is $\theta$ .

The Lagrangian $L$ is: $L=T-V$ where $T$ is the kinetic energy and $V$ is the potential energy.

Hooke's law is the potential energy of the spring itself: $V_{k}={\frac {1}{2}}kx^{2}$ where $k$ is the spring constant.

The potential energy from gravity, on the other hand, is determined by the height of the mass. For a given angle and displacement, the potential energy is: $V_{g}=-gm(\ell _{0}+x)\cos \theta$ where $g$ is the gravitational acceleration.

The kinetic energy is given by: $T={\frac {1}{2}}mv^{2}$ where $v$ is the velocity of the mass. To relate $v$ to the other variables, the velocity is written as a combination of a movement along and perpendicular to the spring: $T={\frac {1}{2}}m\left({\dot {x}}^{2}+\left(\ell _{0}+x\right)^{2}{\dot {\theta }}^{2}\right)$

So the Lagrangian becomes: $L=T-V_{k}-V_{g}$ $L[x,{\dot {x}},\theta ,{\dot {\theta }}]={\frac {1}{2}}m\left({\dot {x}}^{2}+\left(\ell _{0}+x\right)^{2}{\dot {\theta }}^{2}\right)-{\frac {1}{2}}kx^{2}+gm\left(\ell _{0}+x\right)\cos \theta$

Equations of motion

With two degrees of freedom, for $x$ and $\theta$ , the equations of motion can be found using two Euler-Lagrange equations: ${\begin{aligned}{\frac {\partial L}{\partial x}}-{\frac {d}{dt}}{\frac {\partial L}{\partial {\dot {x}}}}&=0\\[1ex]{\frac {\partial L}{\partial \theta }}-{\frac {d}{dt}}{\frac {\partial L}{\partial {\dot {\theta }}}}&=0\end{aligned}}$

For $x$ : $m\left(\ell _{0}+x\right){\dot {\theta }}^{2}-kx+gm\cos \theta -m{\ddot {x}}=0$ ${\ddot {x}}$ isolated: ${\ddot {x}}=(\ell _{0}+x){\dot {\theta }}^{2}-{\frac {k}{m}}x+g\cos \theta$

And for $\theta$ : $-gm\left(\ell _{0}+x\right)\sin \theta -m\left(\ell _{0}+x\right)^{2}{\ddot {\theta }}-2m\left(\ell _{0}+x\right){\dot {x}}{\dot {\theta }}=0$ ${\ddot {\theta }}$ isolated: ${\ddot {\theta }}=-{\frac {g}{\ell _{0}+x}}\sin \theta -{\frac {2{\dot {x}}}{\ell _{0}+x}}{\dot {\theta }}$

These can be further simplified by scaling length ${\textstyle s={x}/{\ell _{0}}$ and time ${\textstyle \tau =t{\sqrt {{g}/{\ell _{0}}}}$ . Expressing the system in terms of $s$ and $\tau$ results in nondimensional equations of motion. The one remaining dimensionless parameter $\Omega ^{2}={\frac {k\ell _{0}}{mg}}$ characterizes the system. ${\frac {d^{2}s}{d\tau ^{2}}}=\left(s+1\right)\left({\frac {d\theta }{d\tau }}\right)^{2}-\Omega ^{2}s+\cos \theta$ ${\frac {d^{2}\theta }{d\tau ^{2}}}=-{\frac {\sin \theta }{s+1}}-{\frac {2}{1+s}}{\frac {ds}{d\tau }}{\frac {d\theta }{d\tau }}$

The elastic pendulum is now described with two coupled ordinary differential equations. These can be solved numerically. Furthermore, one can use analytical methods to study the intriguing phenomenon of order-chaos-order in this system for various values of the parameter $\Omega ^{2}$ and initial conditions $s$ and $\theta$ .

There is also a second example : Double Elastic Pendulum . See

Watch videos about Elastic pendulumExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Elastic pendulum”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons: