  We study in this paper the behavior of a periodically driven nonlinear
mechanical system. Bifurcation diagrams are found which locate regions of
quasiperiodic, periodic and chaotic behavior within the parameter space of the
system. We also conduct a symbolic analysis of the model, which demonstrates
that the symbolic dynamics of two-dimensional maps can be applied effectively
to the study of ordinary differential equations in order to gain global
knowledge about them.
