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Synchronization of Metronomes

Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations0 HN recommenders · 2017–2025
660K views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2010-06-08

A Harvard lecture demonstration in which five metronomes on a movable board gradually fall into synchronization through coupling. Removing the coupling lets them drift out of step.

Cited as the canonical visual demonstration of coupled oscillators synchronizing, applied to analogies from brain waves to LLM populations.

Everyday physics & science demosFundamental physics

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4 comments from Hacker News

@carapace2017 · in “Acoustic Denial of Service Attacks on HDDs”

resonance is a hellofa thing Can carry information, cf. Huygens synchronization, oscillators sync up through resonance... [VIDEO]

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@Animats2023 · in “Brain Waves Synchronize When People Interact”

Everything that oscillates at roughly the same frequency and has some coupling synchronizes.[1] No surprise here. [1] [VIDEO]

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@Animats2025 · in “Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populations”

That may be reading too much into this behavior. Watch this video of metronomes self-synchronizing.[1] That's a pervasive phenomenon. Anything with similar oscillation frequency and coupling will do this. (Including polling systems with fixed retry intervals.) Are you sure that's not just this effect? [1] [VIDEO]

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@roenxi2025 · in “The Majority AI View”

You might find some inspiration in this video of metronomes synchronising and desynchronysing [0]. It doesn't take much to cause things to happen at the same time, in the case the CEOs are likely all responding to the same market signals at the same time for the same reason. Probably interest rates. [0] [VIDEO]

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