Basins of Attraction in Experimental Nonlinear Oscillators

This paper addresses two relatively simple but fundamental questions in nonlinear oscillations: Given an arbitrary initial condition where will the trajectory go, and how long will it take to get there? These related questions are addressed from an experimental perspective where generating global transient behavior has received relatively little attention, despite the fact that a global view of transient behavior provides a much more complete description of the dynamics of a system than a traditional concentration on steady-state behavior. Three different physical systems are studied, each of which exhibits a specific behavior heavily influenced by transient global effects.