Wave Pendulums: The Ultimate Desktop Toy

By Ben • science • 9 Mar 2013

Joe Hanson of It's Okay To Be Smart explains:

A wave pendulum like this is built of equally weighted objects suspended by different (and carefully calculated) lengths of string. Released simultaneously, their differing periods (frequencies of oscillation) cause them to form a “wave” image together that cycles through all possible patterns.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M8ciWSgc_k&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]
via Mental Floss, which links to an article by Andy Rundquist (a fellow physics teacher) that explains the physics behind the pendulums in detail.

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