Learning Goal: To learn the basic terminology and relationships among the main characteristics of simple harmonic motion. Motion that repeats itself over and over is called periodic motion. There are many examples of periodic motion: the earth revolving around the sun, an elastic ball bouncing up and down, or a block attached to a spring oscillating back and forth. The last example differs from the first two, in that it represents a special kind of periodic motion called simple harmonic motion. The conditions that lead to simple harmonic motion are as follows: There must be a position of stable equilibrium. There must be a restoring force acting on the oscillating object. The direction of this force must always point toward the equilibrium, and its magnitude must be directly proportional to the magnitude of the object's displacement from its equilibrium position. Mathematically, the restoring force F is given by F =kx , where x is the displacement from equilibrium and k is a constant that depends on the properties of the oscillating system. The resistive forces in the system must be reasonably small. In this problem, we will introduce some of the basic quantities that describe oscillations and the relationships among