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Huygens' Clock Puzzle Solved

Posted by Hemos on 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.

3 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. This is News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll
    So this was featured in the March issue of Wired.... from last year? And on Sciencenews.com, in October 2000?

    Even the article states that the problem, posed in 1657, is 338 years old - dating the article to 1995.

    Sure, the last one could be a typo, but this is not news

  2. Periods by seanadams.com · · Score: 2, Troll

    My g/f in high school used to start her period on exactly the same day as all the other girls on her soccer team - amazing. I've also heard that girls often have their periods in sync with their mothers'. Has anyone formally attempted to relate this to the pendulum phenomenon?

  3. Re:first post by darkmoon · · Score: 0, Troll

    As a logged in user, I claim this AC's first post for Nader, whose anti-semitic first post reclamations always make me laugh.