Johannes Lampel - Projects/Pendulum

Project based on OOBasecode from nehe

This little OpenGL application was motivated by chapter 39 of the theoretical physics I ( mechanics ) script of Prof. F. Wegner. That chapter can be found here ( mirror ). Java Applets about this can be found e.g. at http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/~elmer/pendulum/

The application simulates a pendulum driven by an external force at a certain frequency. You can observe chaotic behaviour when varying the 3 configuring variables g,w, and omega. For the exact meaning of those, take a look at the script.

On the right there is the actual pendulum shown, with the driving force attached. In the middle of the screen you see a three dimensional diagram showing the state of the pendulum. The coordinates are the angle, the derivative of the angle, and the force applied to the pendulum.
The transparent plane is the plane where the applied force is zero, and red points/lines are added when the force goes thru zero from positive to negative. Therefore these are some sort of Poincaré points. On the left top you can see that plane from above, also showing the Poincaré points and the angle normalized.

Source :
Example.cpp ( main part )
pendel.zip ( all stuff )