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Johnny Five
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Model of Eddy-Current Braking Force on a Magnetic Pendulum
A closed-form theoretical model for the heavy, velocity-dependent damping of a strong cylindrical neodymium-magnet pendulum swinging toward a semi-infinite conducting plate. Treating the magnet as a point dipole, the model computes the eddy currents induced in the plate and integrates them to obtain the magnetic braking force, then couples that force into the pendulum's nonlinear equation of motion to reproduce the observed rapid damping and non-oscillatory approach to the plate.