Sunday, September 30, 2012

Order out of chaos



The above video is from Ikeguchi Labs. They've placed 16 metronomes on a suspended table and started them randomly. A bit of their motion is imparted to the others via the swinging table. This causes them to synchronize in a surprisingly short amount of time.
 

2 comments:

chuck said...

Huygens was the first to notice this phenomenon. It also helps stabilize the 60 Hz frequency of generators attached to a power grid.

ambisinistral said...

Huh. Interesting. I like his term "odd sympathy".