  We comment of the widespread belief among some undergraduate students that
the amplitude of any harmonic oscillator in the presence of any type of
friction, decays exponentially in time. To dispel that notion, we compare the
amplitude decay for a harmonic oscillator in the presence of (i) viscous
friction and (ii) dry friction. It is shown that, in the first case, the
amplitude decays exponentially with time while in the second case, it decays
linearly with time.
