Name: The science of sync
Uploaded: 2008-12-22T01:00:00Z
Duration: 21 min 38 s
Description: Mathematician Steven Strogatz shows how flocks of creatures (like birds, fireflies and fish) manage to synchronize and act as a unit -- when no one's giving orders. The powerful tendency extends into the realm of objects, too.

The sound of many hands clapping

How Starling Flocks Create Their Aerobatic Displays

How the Science of Swarms Can Help Us Fight Cancer and Predict the Future

Flocks, herds, and schools: A distributed behavioral model

The Great Smoky Mountains' Incredible Firefly Light Show

Millennium Bridge

Mathematician Steven Strogatz shows how flocks of creatures (like birds, fireflies and fish) manage to synchronize and act as a unit -- when no one's giving orders. The powerful tendency extends into the realm of objects, too.

Steven Strogatz: The science of sync

The science of sync

Synchrony, stretching from the cosmos to our clapping hands, unveils nature's profound inclination towards order, opposing entropy.

Biological ballets of fish and birds, unguided yet synchronized, reveal simple rules driving complex group dynamics and survival strategies.

The Millennium Bridge's sway, a dance of unintended harmony between structure and pedestrians, showcases sync's pervasive, powerful grip.