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Not being a physicist or engineer, resonance is not a subject with
which I am strongly conversant, and I finally came up with an example
that might be helpful to the similarly challenged.  My example is a
"Slinky", which is a tension spring about 5-cm diameter, about 5-cm
long compressed, stretching out to about a meter, sold as a toy in the
U.S.  "Slinkys" can be made to walk down stairs and do other fun
things.  If you hold one at the end and let it drop, a slight upward
flick at just the right moment with cause it to spring back up toward
your hand, whereas a similar flick at another moment has almost the
opposite effect, dampening the spring action and causing it to dangle
from your hand, with no satisfying spring back.  I expect the flick
that causes the Slinky to spring back to your hand is in phase with the
natural resonance of this system, while the worst example of the other
flick is one-hundred eighty degrees out of phase.

   

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