Dance of the Metronomes

Posted by Rob Beschizza, May 7, 2008 8:02 AM | permalink

Momentum rules.

via DVICE and Music Thing

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Discussion

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#1 posted by pork musket , May 7, 2008 9:25 AM

I kept waiting for it to get interesting but it never happened :(

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#2 posted by bardfinn , May 7, 2008 9:51 AM

That was neat. I need to remember that should I ever need to demonstrate harmonic frequencies, latch-up and capacitance bleed in a silicon circuit. That makes a tremendous practical demonstration of those concepts.

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#3 posted by strider_mt2k

, May 7, 2008 10:05 AM

I oscillate in sympathy.

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#4 posted by dculberson , May 7, 2008 11:01 AM

*I* thought it was interesting, Pork Complainer.

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#5 posted by Qozmiq , May 7, 2008 12:10 PM

I think the people of earth all need to have soda cans under their our feet.

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#6 posted by aeflash , May 7, 2008 12:47 PM

I think the point is that putting them on cans causes them to all become in phase, no matter what the starting phase was.

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#7 posted by ROSSINDETROIT , May 7, 2008 2:58 PM

The same effect has been observed with pendulum clocks. Sometimes two clocks with similar rates will exactly match each other when placed on the same surface but will diverge in rate when physically separated. The metronome trick is a speeded up example of the same. If he had taken the board with the synchronized metronomes off of the cans and put it on the table, the metronomes would eventually have drifted out of phase due to slightly different resonant frequencies.

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#8 posted by cerement , May 7, 2008 8:38 PM

The process is called "entrainment":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(physics)

The board on cans allows the process to happen much faster, but two clocks sitting on the mantle next to each other will entrain over a couple days.

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#9 posted by Tenn , May 7, 2008 9:39 PM

That's insanely cool. I watched it like a cat watches drapes.

I need to create a musical instrument for scratch for my physics class. I wish this could help. More physics, plz.

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#10 posted by Tombola , May 8, 2008 9:36 AM

I can't believe I'm still getting props for finding this (at Music Thing) - I got it from Jason Kottke...

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