Pendulum Waves

It has been a long time since I last posted, partly due to work pressure, but mainly because there has been a lot of other stuff going on that has taken up my time. Anyway, to get myself back into the groove, here is a video that I found fascinating.


This is how it works:

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

The full details can be found here

Feel free to add your 2 pence/2¢/bawbee's worth (delete as appropriate)

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