We probably wouldn’t have, either. It happened during one of those science fair type project things, where students have to come up with their own science projects. Even though it was a fairly middle of the road (now bottom of the barrel) junior high, it happened that a couple of us in that class had Caltech professors as parents, and for some reason those couple all ended up doing related but not identical experiments on coupled pendulums.

You’re totally right about how random things just *stick* with you. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t know if you can engineer those moments, really. But if you teach with enough of those sorts of “wow!” moments, I guess one is bound to stick.

But I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I started reading the paper about why this works, but I got tired. I think I’m going to try to make a post explaining it, if I figure it out myself. It might have to be a series of posts (one on a single pendulum, one on a coupled pendulum fixed to a table, one on a coupled pendulum on a moving board).

It’s amazing what will stick with you from that age – I’ll have to try to be more diligent about inspiring my students.