Frank King (GSM) writes in Change-ringers Digest, Vol 119, Issue 7:
Way back in November 1965, three ringers published an article in the Ringing World entitled "The Clappering of a Bell".
This explained a primitive computer simulation of the bell-clapper system.
The understanding has increased significantly in the years since and recently a new paper has been published in an on-line journal:
"The Dynamics of a Ringing Church Bell"
J. Woodhouse, J. C. Rene, C. S. Hall, L. T. W. Smith, F. H. King and J. W. McClenahan.
Advances in Acoustics and Vibration
Article ID 681787, 19 pages, (2012).
DOI 10.1155/2012/681787
The article may be found at:
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aav/2012/681787As is increasingly the way with academic papers these days, this is open access.
Astute readers will see that both FHK and JWMcC were authors of the original RW article.
Perhaps the most startling finding is that a clapper doesn't strike a bell just once each stroke but scores of times. On a big bell
it might bounce a 100 times or more.
This bouncing turns out to be important. Without it the bell would be so quickly damped that the sound would be something of a
disappointment!
This begs the obvious question:
Given that we hear double-clappering on some bells why don't we hear it on all bells.
This is a point addressed in the article.
Frank H. King
The University Bellringer
Cambridge, U.K.
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