Tick Tock | National Geographic

I want to see if I can use science to
bring order to chaos by controlling time
do you guys sell a metronome to know the
tick-tock signal keep a metronome is an
instrument that musicians use for
keeping perfect time don’t even stop I
want to try and align several metronome
so that they all tick together at
exactly the same time I’ve gathered all
the musicians in the store and told them
they can use anything they want from the
shop to help them out question for you
guys if you had to get all those seven
metronomes synchronised so they’re all
tick tocking
exactly the same time all right how
would you do it we’d have to get
somebody like on each one does anyone
else got any other suggestions of how we
could do that if we all shook the
counter they might all start and start
together
I like that anyone else got any more tie
your string to them all and then just
pull the string so a piece of string
along the top bang and they’ll all pull
and push and be perfectly in sync so how
will I get my metronome is perfectly
synchronized will we manage to align
them manually will a shake of the
counter get them going could a string
from a guitar do the trick or will it be
none of the above first up I’m gonna let
the guys attempt to align them manually
by trying to release them all at the
same time another time to see if a
guitar string might do the job so it
seemed to work for a couple of seconds
until the tension of the guitar string
brought them to an abrupt stop so in
fact the answer was none of the above
but I’ve got an idea that might just
work and I’m gonna put it to the test
using one wooden board and two empty
soda cans you guys ready for this really
start them all out of time
I’m gonna hold on to these I’m gonna let
go of this never guess this is science
in action it takes a few minutes but
eventually all the metronomes start to
swing in sync the movement of the
metronome sets the board moving back and
forth and the movement of the board is
transferred back to the metronomes
gradually forcing them into sync now all
it takes is for two of those arms to be
more or less in sync the rest of them
can’t keep up with that they get bullied
and bit by bit by bit they’re persuaded
to join in sync with the rest of them
with the force which is increasing
increasing increasing until the rest and
just go I give up that’s cool isn’t it
that’s super cool