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Updated: May 23, 2026

Fabrication and Testing of Microfluidic Optomechanical Oscillators
Published on: May 29, 2014
Plastic bottle oscillator as an on-off-type oscillator: experiments, modeling, and stability analyses of single and
Masahiro I Kohira1, Hiroyuki Kitahata, Nobuyuki Magome
1Japan Space Forum, Kandasurugadai, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0062, Japan.
Abstract:
An oscillatory system called a plastic bottle oscillator is studied, in which the downflow of water and upflow of air alternate periodically in an upside-down plastic bottle containing water. It is demonstrated that a coupled two-bottle system exhibits in- and antiphase synchronization according to the nature of coupling. A simple ordinary differential equation is deduced to interpret the characteristics of a single oscillator. This model is also extended to coupled oscillators, and the model reproduces the essential features of the experimental observations.
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