13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Galileo and the Altar Lamp Pendulum
IN 1583 Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), a youth of nineteen attending prayers in the baptistery of the Cathedral of Pisa, was, according to tradition, distracted by the swinging of the altar lamp. No matter how wide the swing of the lamp, it seemed that the time it took the lamp to move from one end to the other was the same. Of course Galileo had no watch, but he checked the intervals of the swing by his own pulse. This curious everyday puzzle, he said, enticed him away from the study of medi... 1 
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notesThe puzzle and the pendulum time piece.
13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Clock as the Mother of All Machines
PRECISELY because the clock did not start as a practical tool shaped for a single purpose, it was destined to be the mother of machines. The clock broke down the walls between kinds of knowledge, ingenuity, and skill, and clockmakers were the first consciously to apply the theories of mechanics and physics to the making of machines. Progress came from the collaboration of scientists—Galileo, Huygens, Hooke, and others—with craftsmen and mechanics. Since clocks were the first modern measur... 1 notes
notesIt required a number of sciences, was based on multiple engineering developments, and contributed itself to science by allowing the measurement of time.
30 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Odd Sympathy
Laid up in bed during a brief illness and idly watching two clocks mounted in one case, Huygens noticed something strange: No matter how the pendulums started out, eventually they always ended up swinging in exactly opposite directions. Huygens wondered whether this odd sympathy might solve the longitude problem. Perhaps, he thought, two such clocks could regulate each other. If one got dirty, for instance, and started running slow, the influence of the other clock would lessen this effect. I... 1 notes
notesMathematician Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock found that two clocks on the same wall will invariably come into counter-synchronization with one another. This is because of thermodynamics and their connection via the support beam in the wall.
31 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Stephen Chu's Pendulum High School Experiment
For the better part of my last semester at Garden City High, I constructed a physical pendulum and used it to make a 'precision' measurement of gravity. The years of experience building things taught me skills that were directly applicable to the construction of the pendulum. Twenty-five years later, I was to develop a refined version of this measurement using laser-cooled atoms in an atomic fountain interferometer.Folksonomies: experiment science fair
Folksonomies: experiment science fair
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notesHe used the pendulum to make a precise measurement of gravity, and the process would eventually inform his Nobel Prize winning work.
