Sunday, March 1, 2009

Double Pendulums

Since my first and second projects both involved the harnessing of gravity; the first being the rudimentary gravity fueled Rube Goldberg device. And the second a giant pendulum and paint brush that lightly scraped across a paper in a slow rhythmic speed. For my Third Project I investigated the possibilities of making a gravity powered double pendulum.


The double pendulum is the epitome of examples of chaos theory. It shows that even though the general action would seem relatively predicable, the end result can be extordnarilly complex because of the sight variations which could cause the second pendumn to act apparently randomly and unpredictably. Chaos theory comes onto play so perfectly with generative art, and this defiantly fit in with the theme of all of my previous projects.




Inevitably I decided against the idea of the double pendulum because it would involve to much fine engineering and metal working to make one like in the videos or in all of the instructions available on youtube. Not to mention that the ball bering involved must be extrodinarally expensive to get that little resistance.

Next I found these videos:





They profoundly demonstrate the ability of a system of order to come out of a system of chaos. In the second video the metronomes are even set to different rates, so that every once and a while one jumps forward, and goes back and forth a couple more times to get synchronized again.

I don’t know How I would be able to make a double pedumn without the proper materials. I could of course try and make one with tie line like I have for the last two projects, but it seems like it would work better if the lever armss where hard. I think the motion in transferred in a more interesting fasion then the upper pendumn arm is capably of both pushing, pulling being pushed and being pulled. I similar pendumn to the one seen here without the arms being ridged would be fairly dull by comparison.


Another Double Pendulum, but this time Computer generated.


It seems like a Double Pendulum without friction is bar far the most exciting. Even though any of these pendulums are interesting. This also reminds me of the perpetual motion machines that have 5 bearings hanging down and transfer the motion from once side to the other while making a loud obnoxious “click click click clicking” in offices all around the world. That is far more predictable, but is still subject to the exact some laws of physics as the double pendumn.
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