Spring-damper
A spring (Hooke's law, stiffness k) paired with a damper (resistance proportional to velocity) — the building block of soft constraints, suspension and cloth.
A pure spring bounces forever; a pure damper slows motion but never pulls back. Together they give a force F = −k·x − c·v that pulls toward the rest point while eating up the motion. Choose the damping right (critical damping) and the system returns as fast as possible without overshooting.
The model is everywhere in games: a car's wheel suspension, a camera that eases after the player, particles in a sheet of cloth held together by springs between neighbours. The downside is that stiff springs demand short timesteps or they blow up — one of the reasons substepping and XPBD exist.