Sunday, May 29, 2011

pendulum waves

this video of a series of swinging pendulums of different lengths is a lot cooler than i thought it would be! the time it takes for a pendulum to go through one swing back and forth (its "period") gets longer as the string length grows. longer string = longer period.

7 comments:

amydove said...

That is fascinating! There must be a mathematical way to describe that.

skywatcher88 said...

Now that is amazing and with very very interesting patterns emerging!
Peace and clear skies!
7718

Anonymous said...

Science art!!!

heroineworshipper said...

Personally hate resonant frequencies.

Amanda? said...

Hey you just got a shout out on Bad Astronomy for this post. Neat!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/01/

Rik Gern said...

It's got legs! Jerry Coyne just posted it, along with a
link to the Harvard website that gives that mathematical explanation. A commenter on Coyne's blog added a YouTube video of Steve Reich's "Piano Phase" which is sort of an audio equivalent.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/physics-art/#comments

Unknown said...

rik - thats cool! i think i'll do a special post about the musical version!