University of Vermont professor Dennis Clougherty (right) and his student Nam Dinh wondered if there are systems in the atomic scale that behave like the vibrating motion of a guitar string in the ...

A plucked guitar string can vibrate for seconds before falling silent. A playground swing, emptied of its passenger, will gradually come to rest. These are what physicists call "damped harmonic ...

Time has always seemed like the one thing physics could count on. Matter changes, stars die, particles flicker in and out, ...

When a guitar string is plucked or a playground swing is set in motion, the movement gradually fades away. Physicists call these “damped harmonic oscillators,” and Newton’s laws do a fine job of ...