You will get energy transfer using three pendulums rather than two, but the
actual behavior is very complicated, and the results you actually get are
dependent on the conditions present. A system like this can actually be
adjusted, or "tuned," and small changes in configuration may give notably
different results. The easiest thing to do is just try some things
experimentally! The theoretical development is beyond the scope of this
exchange.
I hope this helps.
Don Rathjen
Exploratorium Teacher Institute
donr@exploratorium.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Apr 24 2006 - 11:34:46 PDT