My guess, as a mechanical engineer from MIT in 1960, is that light damping is required to allow the pendulum to settle to its natural frequency after being started.
The Brownian Motion thing is also correct for radiometers. You need some molecules, but not many. Bill Hawkins -----Original Message----- From: Hal Murray Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 9:04 PM [email protected] said: > Also, according to some info I read on pendulum clocks, vacuum does > not work because some viscous drag is needed to damp the free > pendulum; Why do I need damping? I thought the general idea on oscillators was to get the highest Q (lowest damping) that was reasonable. But now that I think about it, I'm not sure why. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
