The end of a large plum-bob is actually an hourglass filled with colored layers of sand which hangs from a tripod.Releasing the stopper in the pendulums' base and giving it a push results in beautiful one-of-a-kind sand paintings to facilitate the pondering of impermanence and the nature of time itself.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 25 2014 Sand pendulum http://www.pinteres.../26036504068893394/ [MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 25 2014] Pendulum painting http://teachertomsb...dulum-painting.html [tatterdemalion, Sep 26 2014] You have to pay to watch this one http://torontoartso...ng-by-Callen-Schaub [pashute, Sep 28 2014] spirograph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpirographBasically a spirograph? [metarinka, Oct 01 2014] [+] Yes!! too cool! And great philosophical thinking. Have you ever watched Native Americans do sand painting by hand? It takes incredible patience and skill.-- xandram, Sep 25 2014 Wow that's beautiful! I've seen a couple of pendulums that track a path through sand and this is the reverse.
What you need here is a tripod, a rope, a glass container, couple of bags of different colour sand.
These can be about a high as a person or as small as a beer bottle.
To be used in a garden, lobby or even on a desk.
The desktop sized ones come with a nice plate so th desk doesn't become messy.
To retreive the sand, if it comes in two colours, one colour could be magnetic so it can be seperated from the other with a simple magnet.
Call it zenswing.
You see, I think you can make a hundred of the desktop sized ones for a couple of hundred dollars and sell them for 1,000.
Would look great next to those metal balls that rock back and forth into oneanother, only more pretty, more novelty, more zen.
No selfrespecting, greenpeace manager can do without one.
My point is, you must patent this forthwith.
It seems a funny, small, goofy idea that will never amount to anything out in the real world, so chuck it in halfbakery right?
Well I am here to tell you that I have a matchboxsized paper shredder that has little blue feet and I am sure someone made a lot of cash with that.
So get your lazy ass to your workshop and start producing these.-- zeno, Sep 25 2014 what [zeno] said- (except the part about lazy!)-- xandram, Sep 25 2014 Um, these are wkte, apart from the different colours. <link>-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 25 2014 Doh! I only searched here.I like the magnetic color separation aspect though.Density separation through vibration might let you sort the whole rainbow out without changing particulate size as well.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 25 2014 That's not widely known to exist mate, if someone with a mind as great as twofries puts one shaggy looking (good working) prototype together. When you search for sand pendulum on an internet search website, all the examples and pictures are of a pendulum tracing patterns through laid out sand. To think of the opposite of this is brilliance to my mind.-- zeno, Sep 26 2014 I read that as Pendulumandela...-- not_morrison_rm, Sep 26 2014 Per [MaxwellBuchanan] I've seen these also using dripping paint.-- tatterdemalion, Sep 26 2014 Wouldn't the gradual but significant mass reduction of the pendulum as the medium was released result in a different pattern than that created by a pendulum of consistent mass tracing through a static medium? That makes this a mandala of an entirely different, er, color.-- Alterother, Sep 26 2014 //When you search for sand pendulum on an internet search website, all the examples and pictures are of a pendulum tracing patterns through laid out sand.//
No slur on [2fries], but when I read the idea I remembered having seen similar things. When I Googled, most of the hits were indeed for pendula tracing patterns in a tray of sand, but some were for sand-dripping pendula, as I'd thought.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 26 2014 //Wouldn't the gradual but significant mass reduction of the pendulum as the medium was released result in a different pattern//
That is one of those questions that are interesting.
I think the answer is "no" if you ignore air resistance, and if you assume that the centre of mass doesn't change as it loses sand (only true for a very long string and a short, fat pendulum).-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 26 2014 Even easier than running the thing in a vacuum, and having a plate-shaped dispenser, is making the bob very heavy, (e.g. a very thick-walled lead, or, even better, gold, canister), so that the total fill of sand only makes a few percent difference to its weight.-- pocmloc, Sep 26 2014 //Wouldn't the gradual but significant mass reduction of the pendulum as the medium was released result in a different pattern//
I was thinking about that today.It would make a difference if the legs were sprung to raise as the weight decreased. It would lengthen the arcs and gradually diffuse the spread of each line towards the end.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 26 2014 smart-- zeno, Sep 27 2014 //lengthen the arcs// not if you adjusted the wind resistance (with little movable baffles on the bob, perhaps) to compensate.-- pocmloc, Sep 27 2014 Bunned on first paragraph.-- baconbrain, Sep 27 2014 Isn't there a screensaver that does this?
colored sand harmonograph-- pashute, Sep 28 2014 so basically you've invented a spirograph?-- metarinka, Oct 01 2014 so basically you've invented a spirograph?-- metarinka, Oct 01 2014 so basically you've invented a spirograph?-- metarinka, Oct 01 2014 //Have you ever watched Native Americans do sand painting by hand? It takes incredible patience and skill. //
Watching Native Americans no doubt does require incredible patience, but we would question as to whether any particular skill is required.-- 8th of 7, Oct 01 2014 If ylou converted this from a Pendulumandala to a Pendulumandalabra with lit candles, then I think it would be patentable. If the sand reservoir were large and the candles small, when the candles burned down they could light the sand on fire which would burn down the trail of falling sand and turn the pattern into a fire pattern. And the sand is actually gunpowder.-- bungston, Oct 02 2014 <above> metarinka is posting in stereographic mode, but only for viewers with three eyes..makes you wonder who's reading these...-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 02 2014 //Isn't there a screensaver that does this?//
I doubt it, since a) most screens don't move, and b) most screens don't have a convenient place to insert the sand, nor a nozzle to dispense it.-- pocmloc, Oct 03 2014 random, halfbakery