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| history of physics | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Huygens originally believed the synchronization was due to air currents shared between the two pendulums, but himself dismissed the theory after several tests. Huygens would later attribute sympathetic motion of pendulums to imperceptible movement in the beam from which both pendulums are suspended. This idea was later validated by researchers from Georgia Tech University who tested Huygens idea. Using instruments capable of registering movement too small to have been measured in Huygen's time, the Georgia Tech researchers chronicled the nature of the forces at work on the supporting beam. They found that if the pendulums are moving in the same direction, together they tend to move the beam the opposite direction, giving rise to frictional forces that resist motion in the same direction. If however, the pendulums are moving in opposite directions, these forces cancel each other out, causing the beam to remain motionless. Thus, motion, in this example, tends to be perfectly asynchronous. The Georgia Tech researchers refer to odd sympathy as an example (possibly the first observed examples) of the principle of ''coupled oscillation'', which generally addresses the pervasiveness of Synchronicity in nature. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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