Let be signed displacement along the rails, measured from the centre. The diagram in the original paper shows a guide extending across the centre, so the signed coordinate can pass through zero. Hooke's law gives the radial force . In the rotating reference frame, the radial centrifugal force is . The Coriolis force is perpendicular to the rails and is balanced by their reaction; it has no radial component. Therefore Newton's second law gives
Equivalently, the radial component of acceleration in polar coordinates in the inertial frame is . The radial spring oscillator on a rotating guide has simple harmonic motion only when , with
The angular frequency is in and the frequency in . The critical angular speed is
Strictly this is an upper bound, not an attained maximum for oscillations: at equality , so a displaced object released from rest stays at its displaced position relative to the rails; above it, the central equilibrium is unstable.