{"id":67673,"date":"2021-02-11T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/what-makes-wires-move-like-jump-ropes-heres-the-answer\/"},"modified":"2021-02-11T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-12T07:30:00","slug":"what-makes-wires-move-like-jump-ropes-heres-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/what-makes-wires-move-like-jump-ropes-heres-the-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes wires move like jump ropes? Here’s the answer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

By Ned Rozell<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

On these quiet, still days, as winter plods on, Alaskans tend to notice any movement outside their windows, such as dancing power wires strung between poles.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

The answer as to why the wires bounce is in Neil Davis’s “Alaska Science Nuggets.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

First, though, a refresher on that book — a compilation of 400 of these columns — and why you are reading this right now.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Neil Davis was a do-all scientist at UAF’s Geophysical Institute from the 1960s to the 1980s. He started this column in 1976 at the urging of a newspaper editor.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\"The<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

Davis wrote hundreds of the columns, which the Geophysical Institute has distributed free to newspapers. Other writers took over the column from Davis, who died in 2016. I am the latest in that line, having started in fall of 1994. The directors of the Geophysical Institute have supported the column since its beginning.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

[Alaska<\/a> Science Forum: The gardening potential of the Last <\/a>Frontier<\/a>] <\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Back to the dancing wires. Each wire out there has a certain tune to which it responds, known as a resonant frequency. It’s what a little girl finds when she twirls a jumprope at just the right speed and — without much effort — gets a perfect loop whistling through the air.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t