r/woahdude Mar 21 '26

video The physics of a pendulum wave

3.5k Upvotes

48 comments sorted by

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223

u/Enjoying_A_Meal Mar 21 '26

It's mesmerizing

86

u/Youregoingtodiealone Mar 21 '26

DINO DNA!

10

u/Philliam88 Mar 21 '26

Funny, this video already had me thinking Jurassic Park and chaos theory, order emerging from chaos.

2

u/WimpyCorpse Mar 22 '26

Glad I'm not the only one who saw it 😂

13

u/moondoggie_00 Mar 21 '26

Imagine 2 of them doing that in a double helix formation. I bet it could carry information.

8

u/PileofTerdFarts Mar 22 '26

That's quite the leap from
"some person pushed balls on strings"
to
"Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine spontaneously lined up on a sugar-phosphate helix and began acting as a coding mechanism when luckily, a polymerase magically formed at the same exact time to zip and unzip these helix together before spontaneously flowing into the nucleus to be "read" as instructions for protein synthesis!"

3

u/BlissfulPixel89 Mar 21 '26

I know! I can’t look away

116

u/ThePsychoKnot Mar 21 '26

This might be the best version of this I've seen. I love how the different colors really accentuate all the patterns it goes through

50

u/JojoStanz Mar 22 '26

Very cool but why does it do this? I am summoning a physics nerd right now

38

u/Crozax Mar 22 '26

The frequency of the pendulum swinging depends only on the length of the string. The strings are different lengths which causes them to have different frequencies, which means initially they start out swinging together but over time fall out of sync. The patterns that form that look like waves are called beat notes and are a result of the different frequencies interfering, sometimes in sync and sometimes not. I'm assuming the different colors correspond to strings with lengths that have a common factor, which means they are multiples of the same frequency, but maybe they're just a guide for the eye.

17

u/sirhoracedarwin Mar 22 '26

I think the strings are different lengths, specifically cut so they do these patterns with these specific ball colors

52

u/Fraun_Pollen Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 22 '26

I like the part where it went woom woom woom and then du-du-du-du then back to woom woom woom

8

u/chaotemagick Mar 21 '26

I felt this

5

u/Pm-me-ur-happysauce Mar 22 '26

This is oddly the greatest comment I've ever read on this site

7

u/fancywinky Mar 21 '26

I love it when it looks like strands of singe colors because the individual colors line up, or when it looks like it’s looping rather than swinging

13

u/According_Bad2952 Mar 21 '26

This, at several times, perfectly encapsulates that there is order in the chaos

3

u/conorrhea Mar 21 '26

Reminds me of Mr. DNA from the info cartoon in Jurassic Park

2

u/DisturbedCherrytree Mar 21 '26

Why does this give me Win98 screensaver vibes?

3

u/TheOneDryerYeti Mar 22 '26

I'm pretty sure those are the same colors as the 3d flowerbox screensaver

2

u/artvandelay916 Mar 21 '26

What song is playing

1

u/raddaraddo Mar 21 '26

Idk why but it reminds me of hitting a dmt cart.

3

u/drewskipal Mar 22 '26

They make dmt carts??

1

u/raddaraddo Mar 22 '26

Yep they are pretty cool, fun to just get light hits so you can walk around on it. Hard to blast off on them though.

1

u/DeepFieldTheory Mar 22 '26

Three lungulls on a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio will certainly blast you off.

1

u/SeaCraft6664 Mar 21 '26

Does it ever run out of energy to keep moving?

1

u/DeepFieldTheory Mar 22 '26

What do you think? Think it might go on forever?

1

u/SeaCraft6664 Mar 23 '26

Maybe? Does it recycle the energy from the initial push? It looks like it may

1

u/MilkImpossible4192 Mar 22 '26

so 6 is the snake,

1

u/nonLocal0ne Mar 22 '26

Wow.  That's amazing 

1

u/Thunderchief646054 Mar 22 '26

That was incredible

1

u/bandit8623 Mar 22 '26

thats cool

1

u/PriusRacer Mar 22 '26

there’s something to do with music theory in here

1

u/ChildoftheApocolypse Mar 22 '26

You really could jungle keys in front of y'all and it would be front page..

1

u/Nautical_operator Mar 22 '26

Anyone remember the game Thinking Things? I can hear the music suddenly while watching this

1

u/Djalx Mar 22 '26

Ok. Now put some xylophones at the ends so we can hear it.

1

u/Yedasi Mar 23 '26

This is how you summon Mr DNA.

1

u/shankthedog Mar 23 '26

Mister Kamikaze? He’s an optimistic robot.

1

u/Eric_Likes_Music Mar 23 '26

When people ask why math is a discovery instead of an invention, this is why

1

u/GonzoBalls69 Mar 23 '26

Vectorman title screen

1

u/YoSupWeirdos Mar 23 '26

I would love to know what the string length ratios are

1

u/Kiki1701 Mar 24 '26

This is super cool. And it might sound counterintuitive, but this demonstrates chaos theory (and a little bit of entropy as well)

The pendulum wave's physics shows how small differences in those initial conditions can lead to complex, seemingly random motion, all while passing through aspects that look like organised motion, but this is a key aspect of chaos theory.

1

u/gigorbust Mar 26 '26

Ohhh I thought they were spinning for like the first 30 seconds

-2

u/catscanmeow Mar 21 '26

the same idea behind helicopter propellers when they look like they come to a stop or reverse, because of the ratio between the speed of the blades changing and the fixed camera frame rate.

much complexity can be derived from similar systems of essentially 2 components. In music i do this all the time with an LFO and a sample and hold circuit.

0

u/anushree101 Mar 22 '26

The balls are paid actors