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A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element. The advantage of a pendulum for timekeeping is that it is an approximate harmonic oscillator : It swings back and forth in a precise time interval dependent on its length, and resists swinging at other rates.
Horologium Oscillatorium: Sive de Motu Pendulorum ad Horologia Aptato Demonstrationes Geometricae (English: The Pendulum Clock: or Geometrical Demonstrations Concerning the Motion of Pendula as Applied to Clocks) is a book published by Dutch mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens in 1673 and his major work on pendula and horology.
Historically, the definition of a scientific instrument has varied, based on usage, laws, and historical time period. [1] [2] [3] Before the mid-nineteenth century such tools were referred to as "natural philosophical" or "philosophical" apparatus and instruments, and older tools from antiquity to the Middle Ages (such as the astrolabe and pendulum clock) defy a more modern definition of "a ...
All timekeeping devices use oscillatory phenomena to accurately measure time, whether it is the rotation of the Earth for a sundial, the swinging of a pendulum in a grandfather clock, the vibrations of springs and gears in a watch, or voltage changes in a quartz crystal watch.
Injection pulling and injection locking can be observed in numerous physical systems where pairs of oscillators are coupled together. Perhaps the first to document these effects was Christiaan Huygens, the inventor of the pendulum clock, who was surprised to note that two pendulum clocks which normally would keep slightly different time nonetheless became perfectly synchronized when hung from ...
An ordinary clock's mechanism interacts with the pendulum each swing to perform two functions: first, the pendulum must activate some kind of linkage to record the passage of time. Second, the clock's mechanism, triggered by the linkage, must give the pendulum a push (impulse) to replace the energy the pendulum loses to friction, to keep it ...
He measured the period of his pendulum very accurately using the clock pendulum by the method of coincidences; timing the interval between the coincidences when the two pendulums were swinging in synchronism. He measured the distance between the pivot blades with a microscope comparator, to an accuracy of 10 −4 in. (2.5 μm). As with other ...
Schematic of a cycloidal pendulum. The tautochrone problem was studied by Huygens more closely when it was realized that a pendulum, which follows a circular path, was not isochronous and thus his pendulum clock would keep different time depending on how far the pendulum swung. After determining the correct path, Christiaan Huygens attempted to ...