Journal of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Sofia, Vol.49 (2019) pp. 224-232 GENERAL MECHANICS CLASSICAL FEATURES OF THE MOTION OF A HEAVY BEAD SLIDING ON A ROTATING WIRE ATA ABU-AS’ AD 1 ,HUSSEIN SHANAK 2 ,J IHAD ASAD 2* 1 Dept. of Applied Mathematics, College of Science, Palestine Technical University, P.O. Box 7, Tulkarm, Palestine 2 Dept. of Physics, College of Science, Palestine Technical University, P.O. Box 7, Tulkarm, Palestine [Received: 20 January 2019. Accepted: 08 July 2019] ABSTRACT: In this paper, we study the motion of a heavy bead sliding on a rotating wire. Our first step was constructing the classical Lagrangian of the system. Secondly, we derived the Euler- Lagrange equation (ELE). Thirdly, we solve the obtained ELE, which is a non-homogenous second order linear differ- ential equation. Finally, by using MATLAB the equation is solved numerically for some selected parameters, and for specified initial conditions. KEY WORDS: Heavy particle, Lagrange equation, Euler-Lagrange equation, Particular solution, Homogenous solution, Numerical solution. 1 I NTRODUCTION Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics play an important role in solving a wide range of classical physical systems [1–3]. This branch of classical mechanics is based on scalars concepts (i.e. kinetic and potential energies). Classical mechan- ics books contain many such systems, and for more details one can refer to the three references [1–3] above. Solving such systems by this technique results in obtaining differential equations called equations of motions (i.e. Euler-Lagrange equations). These equations have to be solved for some given initial conditions either analyti- cally or numerically in some cases. In under graduate level mathematician and physician students study an interesting course called ordinary differential equations (ODE). In this course students study techniques that enable them to solve many branches of ODE, see for example [4–7]. Numerical solution of ODE’s are powerful because they help scientists in solving many kinds of DE’s without the need of knowing their analytical solutions due to difficulty, or insufficient data. In literature one can find many numerical methods and techniques that has been considered [8–12]. In this paper, we choose an interesting physical system (a heavy bead sliding in a rotating wire). The importance of this example is due to the fact that the kinetic * Corresponding author e-mail: drjasad@yahoo.com