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Re: Rotating Stick -- reduction to quadratures

At 04:07 PM 11/28/99 -0500, Robert Carlson wrote:

Here is a question for anyone on the list. What is the period of a point
mass attached to a string of length one meter, released from rest from the
horizontal?
>
>[... various low-order approximations rejected ...]

You could perhaps solve the equation of motion in terms of an elliptic
integral, and evaluate the latter with plennnnty of accuracy using your
favorite standard math package (IMSL, mathcad, ....).

If you want to see an algorithm you can use for writing your own numerical
evaluation, look in Abramowitz and Stegun.

If you really want the power series per se (not particularly good for
numerical accuracy) look in A&S or perhaps Gradshteyn and Ryzhik.