Trying to find out if there is a name for the phenomenon or principle or whatever it is described below. I’m interested in learning more about it, whether it’s something that is used in applications outside of this specific one, that kind of thing.

Here we have tracks designed to divide marbles between them using gravity. In previous designs this guy has done, where the tracks divide small difference in the position of the topmost marble can sometimes lead to the whole thing jamming up.

By making the tracks the serpentine sort of shape that they are in these pictures the marble at the bottom can move up and down the track without effecting the position of the marble at the top which fixes the jamming problem.

Video

https://youtu.be/dNlZ2NO5vg8?t=67

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_artery

SCIENCE said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_artery

Hmmm, read a bit on that but don’t really see how it relates?

Someone in the comments of the Youtube video said “Have you quantized marbles?”

That’s what’s happening here. Not a unique mechanical process to quantize otherwise continuous processes. The second hand on most clocks do the same. But the marble at the top moves in discrete intervals, one marble diameter at a time, whilst the marble at the bottom moves in a continuous range, and the marbles in between are somewhere in between discrete and continuous. That’s really interesting, especially given that it’s achieved not through gear mechanisms or other typical mechanical processes but rather through the physical properties of the marbles and the tracks themselves.

esselte said:

SCIENCE said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_artery

Hmmm, read a bit on that but don’t really see how it relates?

Someone in the comments of the Youtube video said “Have you quantized marbles?”

That’s what’s happening here. Not a unique mechanical process to quantize otherwise continuous processes. The second hand on most clocks do the same. But the marble at the top moves in discrete intervals, one marble diameter at a time, whilst the marble at the bottom moves in a continuous range, and the marbles in between are somewhere in between discrete and continuous. That’s really interesting, especially given that it’s achieved not through gear mechanisms or other typical mechanical processes but rather through the physical properties of the marbles and the tracks themselves.

((Edited to add)) … through the physical properties of the marbles (spheres, the most “natural” of the 3 dimensional geometries) and tracks themselves under the influence of potential energy converting to kinetic energy via gravity – one of the “fundamental forces”.

If no-one knows what this specific phenomenon is called, can anyone at least point me to similar phenomena?