Vertically Vibrated Ball-Chains in a Sinusoidal Potential Undergraduate report, unpublished, May 2014. J. McGibbon Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A7.

Ordinary ball-chains are seen to exhibit interesting coupled motions when vibrated on a vertically oscillating plate. Knots in such chains are seen to exhibit random walk behaviour, and at certain driving parameters they spontaneously coil into spirals. This report discusses the behaviour of such chains in a sinusoidal potential, achieved by sinusoidally modulating the height of the plate.

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