That is why I am now asking the experts!Īttached to this message is a link to my current worksheet on Excel for this problem, so you can tell me what I am doing wrong and need to rearrange. I am sure that there is a way to set things up in Excel so as to make it possible for me to solve this problem and find a value for the period of oscillation. Unless I have a definite value or direct expression for T, it displays a message that I am committing a division by zero error, since the unknown T is divided by twice in the equation

The problem is that when I plug this equation into Excel, I cannot seem to find any way to solve for T unless I actually have one of the boxes set for T= something. My text tells me not to 'waste time trying to rearrange this equation for the variable of interest (T)' and this equation is so complex that I quite frankly could not figure out how to arrange this equation as 'T= everything else' anyway. I need to solve for T, which will describe the period of oscillation in seconds.

The values of t (3.45 seconds), of a (1.89 m/s^2), and of A (2.34 m) are given. The equation is a(t)=-A(2pi/T)^2 times (cos(2pi/T)(t)), where a is acceleration, t is time, A is amplitude, and T is the period of oscillation.

I am currently trying to solve a problem in a physics class in which I am required to use Excel to solve for an unknown variable in the equation for acceleration of an object in simple harmonic motion. Hello, my name is Stephen Lanford and I am very new to using Microsoft Excel.

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