A demonstration in physics

[TexasTowelie]

Got to see this demonstration of physics by bowling balls this weekend. It's beautiful and cool. Watch all the way to the end to see the balls move back in phase with each other, as they are at the start. In between, it moves from beautifully ordered to apparent chaos and back, again and again.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204436050561637

[wandy]

1. Nice, and with bowling balls. And introducing Pendulum Waves..................

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.

http://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?pageContentId=icb.pagecontent341734&pageid=icb.page80863&state=maximize&view=view.do&viewParam_name=indepth.html

This one is easier to see but doing it with bowling balls is impressive.

[cantbeserious]

2. Nice

eom

[Live and Learn]

3. Loved it, thanks for sharing.

That first comment, "it moves from beautifully ordered to apparent chaos and back, again and again" seems so relevant to human history too.

[newfie11]

4. Thanks for posting this

Fascinating!!

[Gothmog]

5. WOW

That was amazing. Thanks for posting

[progressoid]

6. Love the choice of bowling balls.

My brother and I once built a Newton's Cradle with bowling balls as a Christmas present for our Dad. He was a physics teacher.

Here's a smaller version of the Pendulum wave:

[rock]

7. WOW!