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Newton’s Cradle is well-known for its repeating clicks, and gracing the desks of executives everywhere. This fragile, but awesome installation by Yasutoki Kariya changes things up a bit by using light bulbs instead of metal spheres. Surprisingly, they manage not to shatter.
If you’re choosing things to bang together, light bulbs should rank pretty low on the list, but shatter-potential aside, watching the light course back and forth through this Newton’s Cradle is absolutely mesmerizing.
Named “Asobi”, the installation is a nominee for the 2012 Mitsubishi Junior Designer Award and beautifully visualizes Newton’s third law with a little help from Edison. As Redditors suggested, perhaps “Edison’s Cradle” might be a more apt name for the piece, but it’s gorgeous nonetheless. So long as it stays in one piece, anyway. [My Modern Metropolis]
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The thing I always found fascinating about Newton’s cradles was that as soon as* the moving ball hit the stationary ones, the opposite ball bounced. This lacks that, but I guess the light may represent that speed.
* okay, so near** speed of light.
** I don’t think we’ve ever shown conclusively the speed of gravity is c.
Actually the shock is transmitted through the balls at the speed of sound in the material they’re made of, which is nowhere near the speed of light. It’s just a very short distance and human perception is slow.
…gah. That should have been pretty obvious thinking about it. Too much modelling bodies as rigid. Even then I’d be wrong mind. >_<
#correction, I think it should be called “Swan’s cradle” For he was an Englishman!
Looks like the lightbulbs don’t actually touch each other, it’s just the plastic base that makes contact with the two mechanisms. Clever.
Quite simply this isn’t a demonstration of a newtons cradle. If it were the time between the first bulb hitting and the last bulb moving off would be imperceptible, Instead the bulbs on the end are launched by metal pins in the black boxes by the bases.
Just a case of an artist adapting the laws of physics so that they look better.
M.C. Escher scoffs at your slander.