Pendulum Waves, pt. 1

Instigated by Jeff Goodman and executed by many, this is the Celo Bowling Ball Pendulum Wave. The structure was built on February 25 above the soccer field.

 

Here it is from the side. You can see that it is a series of successively longer pendulums. If you are not familiar with pendulum waves, take a look at this beautiful video of a tabletop version.

Here's another view.

Here's the attachment system. The eyebolts are going into a threaded anchor, which became very useful as micro-adjusters as the balls got tuned closer and closer to the exact right length to make the wave patterns appear.

The balls all have to be released at the same moment for the effect to work--hence this device.

Release the Kraken!

Here's the initial wave pattern from above. This part worked almost from the beginning. The trick is getting the later patterns to appear, which only happens if the relative speeds of all the different pendulum cycles are in the proper relationship--which is a matter of getting the length of each pendulum exactly correct. Lots of trial; lots of error.

Chief co-conspirators Matt, Jeff, and Eric, making some adjustments late on Sunday.


Celo Bowling Ball Pendulum Waves, getting there from Robin Dreyer on Vimeo.

We'll depend on Jeff to put up a nice video once it's working perfectly, but meanwhile, this one shows the release and the initial wave pattern followed by a pattern formed later in the cycle.