Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-classical-mechanics-course-of-part-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2016/1/c/solution

Treat the marble as a frictionless point particle; no size, rolling constraint or friction law is supplied. Neglect its vertical kinetic energy as requested, but retain the gravitational potential energy .
For completeness keep the general constant cup rotation rate . In cup components the center's velocity is . With , the horizontal velocity norm is . Thus
In the nonrotating translating case , this reduces to
The time-only constant may be dropped. Integrating the cross-velocity term by parts gives an equivalent Lagrangian
It differs by a total derivative and a time-only term, so gives the same trajectories but different expressions for the canonical momenta. The small-vertical-velocity approximation is typically consistent at small surface slope ; it need not remain valid during unlimited resonant growth.

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