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Dear, before we take any detailed study of SIMPLE HARMONIC MOTION, let understand first the meaning of the word 'motion' and harmonicity or periodicity of a motion. So we see different objects around us, we generally call some of them moving, while others are at rest if an object does not change its position with the passage of that time, it is at rest. But if the position vector of a body changes with time, it is surely in the state of motion. Rest and motion, as all of us know are only relative concepts.

No object in this world can ever be in a absolute motion or at absolute rest. An object can have three types of motion :-

1 Translatory Motion-  is the motion in which the object advances along a straight path, from point to point, as the time is elapsed or along a smooth curvillinear path.

2. Rotatory Motion - involves the motion of an object  about a fixed point, often repeatedly covering the same path. Such a motion may be uniform or non-uniform.

3. Vibratory motion-  is a motion, a body is found to move back and forth, on a given stretch of path, about a fixed point called its mean position.

While in case 1, the path is never repeated as the body advances, in cases 2 and 3 it is not so, The body repeats its motion on along the same fixed track. Typical eg. can be enumerated for each type of motion. For instance , a freely falling object an object sliding down an inclined plane, a train running over its track etc. are examples of translatory motion, Motion of our own earth around the sun, hands of a clock, an electron moving around an atomic nucleus, etc are typical eg. of rotatory motion. Motion of a clock pendulum, fluttering wings of a honey bee etc. are all eg. of vibratory motion.