Self-synchronization in coupled salt-water oscillators

✍ Scribed by Statoshi Nakata; Takahiro Miyata; Nozomi Ojima; Kenichi Yoshikawa

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 522 KB
• Volume: 115
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-2789
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-2789(97)00240-6

✦ Synopsis

The coupling of nonlinear oscillators was studied experimentally and theoretically. In the experiment, the electrochemical potentials in the salt water in cups dipped in a larger vessel filled with pure water were measured, where both the liquids were made to contact through a small orifice on the bottom of the individual cup. The mode of oscillations was found to depend on the surface area of the pure water. Another experiment was made to observe a coupling between the flows through separate orifices on the bottom of a single cup. The mode of flows depended on the difference in height between the two orifices. These experimental findings are predicted in a semi-quantitative manner by numerical simulations by the use of coupled ordinary differential equations.