  This study shows that typical pendulum dynamics is far from the simple
equation of motion presented in textbooks. A reasonably complete damping model
must use nonlinear terms in addition to the common linear viscous expression.
In some cases a nonlinear substitute for assumed linear damping may be more
appropriate. Even for exceptional cases where all nonlinearity may be ignored,
it is shown that viscous dissipation involves subtleties that can lead to huge
errors when ignored.
