Stable, metastable and unstable equilibrium of a ball on a hill.
For more on stability, see the “stability” tag. These figures are used in Ben Kilminster’s lecture notes for PHY111.
Edit and compile if you like:
% Author: Izaak Neutelings (October 2020)% Inspiration: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/physics/chapter/9-3-stability/\documentclass[border=3pt,tikz]{standalone}\usepackage{physics}\usepackage{siunitx}\usepackage{tikz}\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta}\tikzset{>=latex} % for LaTeX arrow head\colorlet{xcol}{blue!50!black}\colorlet{vcol}{green!70!black}\colorlet{myred}{red!65!black}\colorlet{mypurple}{blue!60!red!80}\tikzstyle{rvec}=[->,xcol,very thick,line cap=round]\tikzstyle{vvec}=[->,vcol,very thick,line cap=round]\tikzstyle{myarr}=[-{Latex[length=3,width=3]}]\tikzstyle{myarr2}=[{Latex[length=3,width=2]}-{Latex[length=3,width=2]}]\tikzstyle{CM}=[red!40!black,fill=red!80!black!80]%\def\tick#1#2{\draw[thick] (#1) ++ (#2:0.1) --++ (#2-180:0.2)}\begin{document}% INSTABILITY\begin{tikzpicture}\def\ymax{2.5}\def\xmax{3.8}\coordinate (O) at (0,0);\coordinate (A) at (0.10*\xmax,0.9*\ymax);\coordinate (B) at (0.25*\xmax,0.5*\ymax); % metastable eq.\coordinate (C) at (0.46*\xmax,0.7*\ymax); % instable eq.\coordinate (D) at (0.56*\xmax,0.52*\ymax); % no eq.\coordinate (E) at (0.70*\xmax,0.2*\ymax); % stable eq.\coordinate (F) at (0.92*\xmax,0.8*\ymax);\draw[->,thick] (0,-0.1*\ymax) -- (0,1.05*\ymax) node[below=3,left] {$U$}; %=mgh\draw[->,thick] (-0.1*\ymax,0) -- (1.05*\xmax,0) node[below left] {$x$};\draw[very thick,orange!80!black](A) to[out=-75,in=180,looseness=0.7] (B)to[out=0,in=180,looseness=0.7] (C)to[out=0,in=120,looseness=0.8] (D)to[out=-60,in=180,looseness=0.6] (E)
Click to download: dynamics_stability.tex • dynamics_stability.pdf
Open in Overleaf: dynamics_stability.tex