  Equations of motion are developed for the oscillatory rotation of a disk
suspended between twisted strings kept under tension by a hanging mass, to
which additional forces may be applied. In the absence of forcing, damped
harmonic oscillations are observed to decay with an exponential time envelope
for two different string types. This is consistent with damping caused by
string viscosity, rather than air turbulence, and may be quantified in terms of
a quality factor. To test the proposed equation of motion and model for viscous
damping within the string, we measure both the natural oscillation frequency
and the quality factor for widely varied values of string length, string
radius, disk moment of inertia, and hanging mass. The data are found to scale
in good accord with predictions. A variation where rotational kinetic energy is
converted back and forth to spring potential energy is also discussed.
