Abstract
A set of uncoupled pendula may be used to exhibit "pendulum waves," patterns that alternately look like traveling waves, standing waves, and chaos. The pendulum patterns cycle spectacularly in a time that is large compared to the oscillation period of the individual pendula. In this article we derive a continuous function to explain the pendulum patterns using a simple extension to the equation for traveling waves in one dimension. We show that the cycling of the pendulum patterns arises from aliasing of this underlying continuous function, a function that does not cycle in time.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 778-782 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | American Journal of Physics |
Volume | 69 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 2001 |