Mass-Spring Resonators

Since a harmonic oscillator is produced by a simple mass-spring system, a mechanical generator for the harmonic basis functions of Bernoulli is readily obtained by equating Newton's second law for the reaction force of an ideal mass , with Robert Hooke's spring force law (published in 1676), where is an empirical spring constant [67]. Hooke (1635-1703) was a contemporary of Newton's who carried out extensive experiments with springs in search of a spring-regulated clock [267, pp. 274-288]. Hooke's law was generalized to 3D by Cauchy (1789-1857) as the familiar linear relationship between six components of stress and strain.^E.7

Elementary mass-spring models have found much use in computational physical models for purposes of sound synthesis [71,92]. For example, a mass-spring oscillator is typically used to model a brass-player's lips [7], piano hammers [43], and is sometimes included in woodwind-reed models [412].

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