The Pendulum Worm Physics Project

The Pendulum Worm is to mimic the visual effects created by its sister, the Pendulum Snake. The Pendulum Worm demonstrates a standing wave of changing wavelength but in the vertical plane. The device consists of 16 mass-spring oscillators which are precisely tuned to a frequency from 1.25hz to 1.40 by 0.01hz increments. This resulted in a standing wave repeating every 100 seconds.

Each oscillator is excited by an electronic solenoid. Each solenoid pulls down at the tuned frequency of the mass-spring oscillator. The amplitude is controlled by the time duration of the energized solenoid.

The springs were fatigue tested for over 14 million cycles to ensure the natural frequency of the Mass-spring system remained constant over the life of the Project.