Paper 4, Section II, C
Part IA, 2007
A small ring of mass is threaded on a smooth rigid wire in the shape of a parabola given by , where measures horizontal distance and measures distance vertically upwards. The ring is held at height , then released.
(i) Show by dimensional analysis that the period of oscillations, , can be written in the form
for some function .
(ii) Show that is given by
and find, to first order in , the period of small oscillations.