Pendulum Waves

Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

For more details see http://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k16940&pa...

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.

Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg [Am J Phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)] at the University of Maryland. The particular apparatus shown here was built by our own Nils Sorensen.

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Video courtesy of Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations, © 2010 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Category:

Education

Tags:

• simple harmonic motion
• visual traveling waves
• uncoupled pendulums
• periodic motion
• quantum revival
• aliasing
• beating
• demonstration

[JackAndTheSparrow]

No-one's mentioned Allen. Great performance, Allen.

[NatSciDemos]

@JackAndTheSparrow Allen says thanks.

[chynna322]

@alquiora I'm sorry if I find this cool, maybe its because I am a math geek who is taking geometry honors... So please leave me to enjoy my life. Btw I have a mentally disabled friend so watch what you say, it can be offensive to people.

[Capotey]

Hey wait, this isn't DnB at all....

[poppypia1]

my 5th grade teacher showed me this exact video!!! Our whole class was like AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[McXalos]

@anteil95 Watch it to Pendulum music.

[randommusic990]

This is pretty cool-our science teacher showed us this video in class

[anteil95]

watching this to dubstep fits so good

[TheFamguyGuy]

Mindfuck.

[blahblibidyblahblah]

this is porn for people who can think

[Drake117]

What the H...that is just amazing.

[Cshapes25]

@TheLiLegacy search him up. Hes from Quest Crew. Champions of Americas Best Dance Crew Season 3.