Addendum: ‘Modeling the amplitude and energy decay of a weakly damped harmonic oscillator using the energy dissipation rate and a simple trick’ (2025 Eur. J. Phys. 46 015004)

We show how to adapt the approach introduced for viscous damping in Lelas and Pezer (2024 Eur. J. Phys. 46 015004) to derive the approximate amplitude decay in the case of damping by a force of constant magnitude (sliding friction) and in the case of damping by a force proportional to the square of velocity (air resistance). We obtain two first-order differential equations from which we obtain the approximate time-dependent amplitudes corresponding to the considered damping forces. Our approach is suitable for first-year undergraduates, as it relies on the physical concepts and mathematical techniques they are familiar with.