Huygens' Clock Puzzle Solved · Slashdot Mirror

Posted by Hemos on Wednesday February 20, 2002 @08:30PM from the tick-tock-tick-tick-tock dept.

PhotoGuy writes "Okay, I haven't heard of this puzzle either until now, but it sounds like a fascinating phenomenon. According to this article:Huygens had two clocks side by side and he found that even when they began out of sync, they soon got into a rhythm where the pendulum on one moved as if it were a mirror image of the other.The article is pretty light on the explanation, noting only the conditions required (small relative mass of the pendulums [pendula?], relatively close speed of the clocks), and not really addressing the physics behind it. " There's a great site at Georgia Tech that explains the puzzle in more detail.

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Re:Antiphase by jonnythan · 2002-02-20 21:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

Not so. The three would each be off by 1/3 of a period.

Just like three phase power... three sine waves 120 degrees apart. Sum them and you have a constant 0.

I've no idea if that would actually happen in that setup, but my guess would be that yes, they would cancel each other out in total antiphase this way.