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Pendulums javascript demo

Pendulum bobs displayed as small footballs (looks cute). Simple harmonic oscillators substitued the original pendulums.

Copyright © 2011 Petr Sladek (slady), License: CC BY-NC-SA, Downlad the source codes.

Dedicated to Richard Lamberty.

The original idea comes from the pendulums video:

Beautiful, out-of-phase pendulums

This Harvard physics apparatus uses a series of pendulums of varying lengths, swinging together, to make a mesmerizing dance:

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.