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Weakly Coupled Pendulums

Resonance transfer of energy between weakly coupled oscillators is illustrated by a pair of identical pendulums (brass balls suspended from a rigid ring stand. The strings are approximately 75 cm long, and are carefully adjusted to be of equal length). The pendulum bobs are coupled by a soft coil spring. If one pendulum is set in motions, its energy will gradually be transferred to the other pendulum, and back again, with a period of ten or twenty seconds (depending on the strength of the coupling spring).

This apparatus has also been used to illustrate symmetric and anti-symmetric modes of vibration, and as an analogy to oscillations in particle physics. In the latter case, a piece of heavy string is threaded through the spring to selectively increase the damping of the symmetric mode. The system is started in the symmetric mode and is observed to “decay” into the anti-symmetric mode.

Weakly Coupled Pendulums