“Innovative Technologies Move Europe II”

A student and teacher project by Lenord + Bauer (L+B) and

Science on Stage Deutschland e.V. (SonSD)
Project Description/Final meeting May 2007

Country: Czech Republic

Team: GCHD
Topic: Chaos
Participants:
Teachers: Mgr. Štěpánka Jirošová, Doc. Jan Obdržálek,
Students: Petr Hedvábný, Jan Voříšek, Michal Hakl, Pavel Obdržálek, and Pavel
Malý

Description: (max. 1-2 pages, drawings included)

We chose the project “chaos” because we
found it interesting. Considering it’s not difficult
to make something chaotic, but it’s much more
difficult to prove that its behavior is chaotic, we
decided to work out as simple chaotic system as
possible. Our choice was an elastic pendulum.
spring
Physical principle
The elastic pendulum differs from the
classical one in one thing only – it is not
suspended by an inextensible weightless string but
by a spring. This makes its motion much more weight
complicated and, when the critical mass is
applied, its motion can be unstable and very
sensitive to the initial conditions. The motion of
the pendulum then consists of two main motion types: pendulum swing, and spring vibrations.
During the transition between these motion types, which is called bifurcation, the pendulum is
very sensitive to a small initial conditions deviation. Right here we expected to see the chaos.
We made a computer simulation of the pendulum motion in a program Interactive Physics and
we were able to see that swinging and vibrations alternate very regularly. We decided to solve
the motion of the pendulum in two dimensions only, because the third direction is
functionless and makes the motion too complicated.

Position detection
We constructed the elastic pendulum with appropriate properties and suggested a
method to measure its position. We tried a sonar detection, however it turned out to be very
inaccurate and it wasn’t clear if the pendulum or the spring is detected. That is why we
decided to use another method. The motion of the pendulum was recorded by the video
camera. Then we used the computer program VIANA to analyze this video record. This
program works on the principle of the color position detection. The color of our pendulum
was very contrastive to its background (yellow-blue contrast). According to this we got very
accurate results. We measured the displacement of the pendulum in horizontal – x direction,
which represents swinging motion, and in vertical – y direction, which represents the
vibrations. Unfortunately, the swinging and vibrations alternated absolutely regularly, as well
as in the model. So that pendulum wasn’t chaotic.
1
 0,45

0,4

0,35

x [m]
0,3
y [m]
0,25

0,2

0,15
1
33
65
97
129
161
193
225
257
289
321
353
385
417
449
481
513
545
577
609
641
Graph 1: The measured displacement of the pendulum in x and y direction in time
Pendulum without any external force – the x and y deflection alternate very regularly

Making the chaos

To make the motion of the pendulum motor
chaotic, we decided to apply some external force
on the system. This force will act with the
frequency slightly different from that of the
pendulum. Because of the interference of the
frequency of the pendulum and the frequency of
the force the motion of the pendulum becomes
chaotic. To apply the force we suspended the
pendulum on the rotating wheel. We made the
computer model again and it showed the motion spring
of the pendulum is not predictable, because the
motion types mentioned above alternate
irregularly. We added the motor to our model and
measured the position of the pendulum during its
motion. The obtained data were very interesting. weight
The vibrations and swinging alternated very
irregularly and it wasn’t possible to predict the next change. The behavior of our pendulum
became chaotic.
0,5
0,45
0,4
0,35
0,3
x [m]
0,25
y [m]
0,2
0,15
0,1
0,05
0
1
96
191
286
381
476
571
666
761
856
951
1046
1141
1236
1331
1426
1521
1616
1711

Graph 2: The measured displacement of the pendulum in x and y direction

Pendulum with the external force – the x and y deflection alternate very irregularly