Resonance

by submission

Image text: It's really hard to control the frequency, actually.

This explanation submitted by Amy:  Hi, I’m just a reader.  There are a lot of the comics that I don’t get, especially the ones about programming (thus the reason I come to this site).  But I love the comics about math.  They make me feel happy inside.  I have no site to link to, and I don't care to have one.

Cueball is annoyed because his coworker is jiggling his leg and making the desk shake.  However, he then reveals his truly nerdy side when he indicates the calculations necessary to target Steve’s desk instead.  The frequency at which Coworker shakes (how many times his leg moves up and down per whatever time interval you want) determines which pieces of furniture are affected, in this comic.  The first frequency that Coworker has resonates with the structure of Cueball’s desk (the frequency is at resonance, so it’s at the best possible spot to shake the desk – a higher or lower frequency will not produce anything near the resonance results).  This phenomenon of only certain things resonating with vibrations is most dramatically demonstrated with earthquakes and skyscrapers.  An earthquake will tragically hit a city, and there will be much chaos and screaming and china-breaking and so forth, but only the buildings of a certain number of floors will collapse.  The, say, 20-floor buildings all resonate with the particular frequency of the earthquake, while the 30- and 10- floored buildings stand (relatively) still.  So of course Cueball calculates the necessary increase in frequency (15% faster jiggling) to resonate with Steve’s desk, and proposes a group effort to spill the drink.

The alt-text just comments on how hard it is to consistently keep a specific tempo.  Actually, I find that my right leg likes to go a little bit slower than my left, so they’ll drift in and out of sync when I jiggle them together.  Odd, I know.