christiaan huygens, the dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who invented the pendulum clockn 1656 made a startling discovery about his clocks while ill and bedridden. noticing two adjacent pendulums swinging in perfect opposition, he wondered what caused this surprising form of synchronization. was there some mysterious force locking them in rhythm? huygens discovered that the clocks, if taken out of synch, created a disturbance, making the surface on which they rested tremble. then something remarkable happened. the pendulums began sync up in their rhythm, swinging precisely opposite each other like a pair of clapping hands. huygens assumed that the proximity of the clocks to each other and the air disturbance they created was responsibible r synchronizing the pendulums. to test his theory, he placed the two clocks on a plank, and the plank lay atop two chairs positioned back to back. he disrupted the pendulums' sync as before, and immediately the chairs and the plank began to shake. the physical disturbance operating on the chairs continued for another 30 minutes, until th