Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-2/7/a/solution

Let be the centre displacement and the small disk rotation. Put . The moment of inertia of a uniform disc is , obtained from and . Thus the kinetic energy is .
For one spring, let point radially towards its fixed anchor and let be the perpendicular unit vector. The moving attachment is , while the anchor is . Expanding their separation to second order gives the spring extension beyond natural length:
Insert this in the elastic potential energy . For the three symmetric directions, and . Dropping the constant equilibrium energy gives
Therefore the quadratic Lagrangian is
The prestretch terms cannot be omitted: they supply transverse spring stiffness and the entire rotational restoring torque, as derived generally in small oscillations of a disk attached to prestretched radial springs.

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