This seems magic to me, that all of these devices, unattached, would so quickly synchronize with each other.
Metronomes syncronizing
- Post author:Erich Vieth
- Post published:February 4, 2014
- Post category:Science
- Post comments:8 Comments
Erich Vieth
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.
There is a moment where one metronome tries to get out of sync, but is quickly resynchronised. Resistance is futile……
Planetary: It IS tempting to interpret the actions of the metronomes as though they were thinking beings asserting social pressure on each other. Yes, Resistance is Futile.
At about 2m15 you can clearly see that the one far right, second row, has initially settled in counter phase. Somewhere about 2m20 it starts to get out of counter phase and at about 2m40 it is in phase with the rest.
“U.S. physicists have solved a 350-year-old riddle of why the pendulums of two clocks become synchronized. The clocks were the first example of spontaneous synchronization, a phenomenon found throughout nature from cells to the Solar System.” http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020221/full/news020218-16.html
In the 64 version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ti3d3ls5Zg there is one, 4th from the left, 2nd from behind, that is off-beat, but it’s eventually dragged along by the others.
It’s actually simple and obvious.
First, consider the metronome’s design:
A pendulum is mounted on a shaft attached to a spring mechanism designed to keep the pendulum centered. To overcome energy losses, an escapement mechanism releases a little energy from a mainspring to compensate for energy losses. An adjustable counterweight on the pendulum sets the resonance frequency.
As the pendulum swings from side to side, the rest of the metronome is pushed in the opposite direction (Newton’s 3rd law). This motion is transferred to the platform as longitudinal waves The waves that are least in phase cancel out, while those c;loser in phase reinforce other waves, imparting a swinging motion to he platform. This swinging motion causes mass dampening on the out of phase metronomes,modifying their pendulum’s motion to match the ones in sync.
By the time the metronomes are synced, the motion of the platform can be observed. pay attention to the out of focus lettering on the right side of the platform.
Niklaus: Thanks for this assist. But I read that pendula will synchonize even when hanging from two nails on a wall. Same principle?
Not if they are chaotic 😉