I Ran 7 Experiments on Metronomes That Sync Themselves

100 metronomes on a board that can roll sync up on their own. Nobody touches them. So I started changing things, one at a time: I clamped the board, set one metronome to the wrong tempo, put two tempos and then two teams on one board, and finally went up to 400 and 1,000 metronomes. Gold means a metronome is in step with the others. 0:00 100 metronomes, started at random 0:15 a clamped board 0:31 the rebel (122 bpm vs 120) 0:47 two tempos (120 and 150 bpm) 1:02 gold vs blue: two teams on opposite beats 1:20 400 metronomes 1:38 1,000 metronomes, one chord How it works Every swing pushes the board a little, and the board pushes every metronome back. That small shared push is enough to pull them into one rhythm, the same physics that makes fireflies flash together and a clapping crowd fall into step. Clamp the board and nothing passes between them, so they stay random. A single metronome at a slightly different tempo gets pulled in anyway. Two groups that are far apart in tempo keep two separate beats. This is a simulation of the Kuramoto model, the standard way to describe metronomes on a moving base (Pantaleone, 2002). The coupling is stronger than on a real table, so it happens in seconds instead of minutes. Every tick you hear is a real tick of one metronome in the simulation. What should I try next? #metronome #physics #synchronization #satisfying #science