A particle is acted simultaneously by mutually perpendicular simple hormonic motions $x = a\cos\omega t$ and $y = a\sin\omega t$. The trajectory of motion of the particle will be (a) an ellipse. (b) a parabola. (c) a circle. (d) a straight line.

A particle is acted simultaneously by mutually perpendicular simple hormonic motions x = acosω t and y = asinω

NCERT Exemplar · Q5

x = a\cos\omega t

(a) an ellipse.

(b) a parabola.

(d) a straight line.

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Concept understanding — Simple Harmonic Motion

Simple Harmonic Motion: The Natural Rhythm of Things

Imagine a ball placed at the bottom of a perfectly smooth, U-shaped bowl. If you give it a gentle push, what happens? It rolls up one side, slows down, stops for an instant, then rolls back down, past the bottom, up the other side, stops, and returns. Left alone, it keeps doing this — back and forth, back and forth — in a steady, repeating rhythm.

That rhythm is the heart of Simple Harmonic Motion (SHM). It's the most fundamental kind of oscillatory (back-and-forth) motion in physics.

The Intuition: A Restoring Force That Fights Displacement

The key idea is this: the further you push the object from its resting (equilibrium) position, the stronger the force that tries to pull it back.

In the bowl, when the ball is at the bottom (equilibrium), gravity pulls straight down, and the bowl pushes straight up — no sideways force. But when you push the ball up the side, gravity now has a component that pulls it down the slope. The higher up the side you push it, the steeper the slope, and the stronger that pull-back force becomes.

This is a restoring force — it always points toward equilibrium. And crucially, in SHM, this restoring force is directly proportional to the displacement from equilibrium. Double the displacement, double the restoring force.

F = -k x

The Precise Statement

Simple Harmonic Motion is the motion of an object where the restoring force is directly proportional to the displacement from equilibrium and acts in the opposite direction.

That's it. That single condition — $F = -kx$ — is the entire definition. Everything else (the sine waves, the formulas for period and frequency) follows mathematically from this one law.

What Does This Motion Look Like?

If you track the ball's position over time, you get a beautiful, smooth wave — a sine wave (or cosine wave). It's the same shape as the shadow of a spinning wheel cast on a wall.

The motion has three key descriptors:

Amplitude ( $A$ ): The maximum displacement from equilibrium. How far you initially pushed the ball up the side of the bowl.
Period ( $T$ ): The time it takes to complete one full back-and-forth cycle (e.g., from the leftmost point, back to the leftmost point).
Frequency ( $f$ ): How many cycles happen per second. $f = 1/T$ .

Note

A remarkable fact: for a given system (fixed $k$ and fixed mass $m$ ), the period and frequency do not depend on the amplitude. A big push and a tiny push take exactly the same time to complete one cycle. This is called isochronism — and it's why pendulums were used to keep time in clocks.

The Mathematical Description (Derived from $F = -kx$ )

Using Newton's second law ( $F = ma$ ) and the definition of acceleration ( $a = \frac{d^2x}{dt^2}$ ), the condition $F = -kx$ becomes:

m \frac{d^2x}{dt^2} = -k x

This is a differential equation. Its solution — the position as a function of time — is:

x(t) = A \cos(\omega t + \phi)

Where:

$\omega = \sqrt{\frac{k}{m}}$ is the angular frequency (radians per second). It tells you how fast the oscillation is.
$\phi$ is the phase constant (determines where in the cycle you start measuring time). …

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The two perpendicular SHMs have equal amplitude and a phase difference of $\frac{\pi}{2}$ , which produces a circular trajectory. The correct option is (C).

When two simple harmonic motions act on a particle along perpendicular axes, the resulting path depends on three things: the amplitudes, the frequencies, and the phase difference between them. Here, both motions have the same amplitude $a$ and the same angular frequency $\omega$ , but one is a cosine and the other a sine — that’s a phase difference of $\frac{\pi}{2}$ .

The key insight: if you square and add the two equations, the time dependence cancels out, leaving a relation between $x$ and $y$ alone. That relation is the equation of the trajectory.

Write the given equations:

x = a\cos\omega t

y = a\sin\omega t

Square both:

x^2 = a^2\cos^2\omega t

y^2 = a^2\sin^2\omega t

Add them:

x^2 + y^2 = a^2(\cos^2\omega t + \sin^2\omega t) = a^2

This is the equation of a circle centered at the origin with radius $a$ .

Check the direction of motion. At $t=0$ , $x = a$ and $y = 0$ — the particle is at $(a,0)$ . A moment later, $\omega t$ becomes a small positive angle, so $\cos\omega t$ decreases slightly and $\sin\omega t$ becomes positive — meaning $x$ decreases and $y$ becomes positive. The particle moves anticlockwise along the circle. …

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Q.A particle is acted simultaneously by mutually perpendicular simple hormonic motions x=acos⁡ωtx = a\cos\omega tx=acosωt and y=asin⁡ωty = a\sin\omega ty=asinωt. The trajectory of motion of the particle will be

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Q.A particle is acted simultaneously by mutually perpendicular simple hormonic motions $x = a\cos\omega t$ and $y = a\sin\omega t$ . The trajectory of motion of the particle will be

Unlock everything free for 14 days