
254 Classical Mechanics
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oscillation or one independent oscillator. We examine this general problem of n coupled oscillators
in the next section.
8.2 COUPLED OSCILLATORS AND NORMAL MODES:
GENERAL ANALYTIC APPROACH
For an oscillatory system with n degrees of freedom, the maximum number of normal frequencies is
n. When some of the normal frequencies are identical, the system is said to be degenerate. We shall
limit our discussion to the nondegenerate case.
In the simple example given earlier, the normal coordinates were introduced from symmetry consid-
eration. Suppose it was not easy to discover the normal coordi ...