Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/17/watch-these-metronomes-spontaneously-synchronize.html
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I thought it was rather odd that this was filmed on a shelf sitting on soda cans initially. But it seems the movement in the shelf as it rolls back and forth on the cans speeds up the synchronization.
I’d say that it not only speeds the synching - it enables it. If they were on an ideal rigid and fixed surface they’d never synchronize. Maybe repeat the experiment on a granite surface plate?
Hyugens’ wall must have had some give to it.
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I suppose the metronomes need to be set to the same frequency for this to work.
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Apparently Huygen’s pendulums is a different phenomenon entirely- two pendulums on a fixed surface will sync in opposition, via sound waves through the surface, while pendulums on a moveable surface will sync together.
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I didn’t know that!
Another rabbit hole to ease the tedium of WFH…
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Watch these boingboing articles spontaneously synchronize:
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If this repeat went on long enough, it would happen EXACTLY every 4 years…
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This happened in a storage appliance I was working on. I was at a start-up that put 48 SATA drives into one box. And the seek movements of the harddrives would synchronize and cause them to overshoot and miss seek, dramatically slowing down the product. A bunch of software engineers having to deal with “real” engineering problems like sympathetic vibration 
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yep I always feel like I’m more in rhythm on two cans of beer too.
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Cool. But now I want to see a plot of the path taken by the edge of the platform they’re all sitting on…
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