It took 344 years to crack the "enigma of Huygens' clocks", the first ones used for maritime navigation * The phenomenon of sympathy has been confirmed
Dr. Noah Brosh
Maritime navigation is a difficult task. In the past, sailors used "coastal navigation": following the route of the land landscape, as seen from the sea - and thus knew the location of the vessels. But to cross oceans requires a completely different ability.
Various navigation tools have been invented to solve the problem. The main one was an accurate clock that made it possible to compare the local noon moment - as measured by the sailor - to the noon of a known place. The measurement required seeing the sun and measuring its height in the sky, along with an accurate measurement of time.
The result: the measure of geographic longitude. But sand and water clocks and also candle clocks - did not provide sufficient accuracy. The first accurate clock for maritime navigation was invented by the Dutch Christian Huygens, in 1657. For this use a pendulum. A relatively heavy body, tied to a pole or a string, oscillates at a constant rate: from end to end, from end to end and back again - depending on the length of the body (the pendulum). Its construction guarantees a very accurate time measurement tool.
Huygens placed two pendulum clocks next to each other (to overcome the fear that one would break). Weights were added to the boxes to prevent the pendulums from falling during movement at sea. Huygens discovered that, regardless of the beginning of the pendulum's movement, at the end they always moved in opposite directions: when one moved to the right, the other moved to the left, and vice versa. The phenomenon was called "sympathy". He had no explanation for the meltdown.
It took 344 years to crack the riddle - by an American scientist named Wiesenfeld and a team from the Georgia Institute of Technology. An experiment was built in which Huygens's findings were reproduced and the "sympathetic" phenomenon and the opposite movements were confirmed.
It turned out that this only happens when the pendulums are very light-weight, relative to their boxes. The reason: transfer of forces, between the pendulums and the boxes. In other words: the pendulums try to "move" their storage boxes, while moving.
The pendulum exerts force on its box, through the axis of oscillation and the clock mechanism connected to it and the body of the box. When the box is relatively light (when the pendulum-box mass ratio is less than 1/80) - at least one pendulum stopped its movement. When the ratio is greater than 1/120, opposite fluctuations were seen.
The solution to the "Huygens mystery" is simple, but it took so many years: due to a lack of interest in the subject, or a lack of understanding of physics.
