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bpopeck

For anyone who like me is used to seeing the general solution to $y'' = -\beta^2 y$ written in terms of both sine and cosine as $A\cos(\beta t) + B\sin(\beta t)$, it looks like the form on the slide is equivalent by the cosine addition formula:

$a\cos(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}} + b) = a[\cos(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}})\cos(b) + \sin(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}})\sin(b)] = a\cos(b)\cos(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}}) + a\sin(b)\sin(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}}) = A\cos(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}}) + B\sin(t\sqrt{\frac{g}{L}})$

Arthas007

Background in 21260 helps. The fact that there is no close form solution is still bizarre to me.