A laboratory experiment on coupled non-identical pendulums

Abstract

In this paper, coupled pendulums with different lengths are studied. Through steel magnets, each pendulum is coupled with others, and a stepping motor is used to drive the whole system. To record the data automatically, we designed a data acquisition system with a CCD camera connected to a computer. The coupled system shows in-phase, locked-phase and anti-phase synchronizations when the driving frequency and the coupling strength are changed. With background knowledge from general physics and the simplicity of the equipment, this experiment is easy to implement and would be of interest to undergraduate students.

Experimental distinction of Autler-Townes splitting from electromagnetically induced transparency using coupled mechanical oscillators system

“…Based on the research of a simple pendulum, the coupled pendulums are widely studied during the past decades 17 18 19 and various experimental phenomena have been found using coupled pendulums. Moreover, the pendulum mechanical system could be used to study complicated problems by multi-pendulums coupling using spring 20 21 , a thin horizontal rod 22 , magnets 18 , and so on. And various experimental phenomena could be simulated using these coupled pendulums, such as chaos, synchronization, etc.…”

A quantitative analysis of coupled oscillations using mobile accelerometer sensors

“…The functional form of the accelerations, a 1 and a 2 , of the mobile phones can be obtained by substituting equations ( 6), (7) in (8) and by taking the second derivatives of x 1 and x 2 , as follows:…”

“…Many efforts have been made to introduce coupled oscillations as classroom experiments, usually based on bodies attached to pendulums and springs [4][5][6][7][8]. The position of the oscillating body is usually followed using image recognition techniques (IRT) [6,8]. In rotatory systems, the oscillations are usually followed by measuring the angular velocity [9].…”