Thursday, 4 June 2015

Modeling external forces in Lagrangian dynamics


For example, consider a system with a block on a flat, frictionless surface. On one side is a spring connecting the block to a wall. On the other side, a person's hand is pushing the block towards the wall with some constant force.


Normally, the system is formulated in terms of kinetic and potential energy to obtain the Lagrangian. Getting the potential energy of the spring is straightforward, but what about the hand? Or other forces explicitly added to a system? (Another example would be a pendulum with a constant torque at its pivot.)





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