pendumonium

double pendula lead to chaotic dynamics: good. but what happens if we make things a bit more… complicated? what about a triple pendulum? would it be even more chaotic? let’s see…

a triple pendulum: more chaos

well, why stop there? if we take this to a ridiculous extreme, we get ridiculously complicated behavior…

a septuple pendulum. note that the decreasing lengths of the chain elements make it easier to disambiguate different motions. the way in which energy is transferred to the smaller chains is easily visible.

of course, there’s no reason to consider only chains of pendula. the following compound pendulum has multiple bars and ends, and it is one of my favorite things to look at.

a compound pendulum with four “ends”. just look at it!

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