[00:02] It can quantify three dimensions of space and one of time. How? By exploiting the oscillatory motion of pendular physics. Simply pull it out to the duration you want, lock it, and then when swung from our specially designed
[00:15] hook, its period, the time it takes to leave and return, will be exactly the interval you want, whether it's 1 second, half a second, or all the way up to 3 and 1/2 seconds. But won't it slow down as friction brings it to a stop?
[00:28] No. That's the beauty of pendulums. Remember when we built that tautochrone, the bottom takes the same time no matter where you start? Well, for small enough amplitudes, the circular path of a pendulum is almost exactly the same. So,
[00:42] just like a grandfather clock, this four-dimensional tape measure loses just a few seconds a day. Unlike a textbook pendulum whose string is massless, as you remove tape from our real one, the center of mass gets pulled away from the
[00:54] added slowly drift away from their idealized lengths. But we included those, too, just in case you're a spherical cow in a vacuum. Because it's myself one of those elegant pendulum snakes, where the varying periods of a
[01:09] host of pendulums drift apart and later rendezvous in mesmerizing ways. Join the Curiosity Box today to get your own, because time has never been about sand or hands or screens. It's always been about hanging around.
[01:33] [Music] Summer.