A basic pendulum is a mass at the end of a string that swings back and forth. It seems simple, and it appears in most introductory physics textbooks. But it's not a trivial problem to solve for the ...

As a rule, Donald Saff doesn’t collect clocks he can’t see inside of. It’s the harmonic entanglement of gears—and the skill needed to craft them—that first lured him to horology, the study of ...

Looking back at part I of this idea, I don't think I did a very good job. Let me summarize the key things I wanted to say: Normally, there are two ways of modeling the motion of an object: Calculating ...

Check out Dr. Bob Grober on YouTube. I heard the term “harmonic oscillator” a few years ago and was lost until I found out it was simply a pendulum. Understanding how a pendulum works and how we can ...

In the 17th century, Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, noticed a curious phenomenon. When two identical pendulum clocks are mounted next to each other on a wall, their swings ...