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elephantower wrote:Metasepia: Yes, my partner and I had the same question, and we emailed soinc for confirmation. You can indeed have multiple independent pendulums; as long as they fit into the alloted space.

I would be careful. Indeed it should fit inside the cube mentioned, but under Event Parameters rule f last sentence paraphrased: "...only one device can be impounded which will be used for all trials." made me a bit worried based on your phrasing. I don't see your clarification online, and if I was supervising I would may be consider not allowing it since I don't see this in the rule FAQs/clarifications online either. You don't really NEED multiple independent pendulums anyway. If you brought the email to competition maybe I would say OK to you (elephantower), but it doesn't seem worth it to use multiple independent pendulums (unless you really are using it as a whole as one device and it improves your accuracy).

phil9047 wrote:Hey guys, where would I be able to buy gears for a pendulum clock?

I'm just going to say that in a pendulum clock, gears are the least of your worries. Energy accumulation, transmission, regulation, and counting are simple matters in comparison to distribution. All other parts can be purchased as long as they were not specifically made for timepieces, but you're out of luck when it comes to the escape wheel, the crutch, and the escape lever; you'll have to make them yourself, and a considerable amount of time is needed in order to research, design, develop, and construct the escapement so that it functions as intended. Simply reproducing what you see in pictures of these components is not enough to build a working escapement if you do not completely understand how it works.

I don't know if it shows up on the test very often, but if anyone wants to learn to calculate the day of the week for arbitrary dates on the Gregorian calendar (at least CE [AD], BCE is trickier), I have a Python (2.7) script I wrote for myself a few months ago to practice this just because. If there is enough interest, I might see about turning it into a web app, otherwise I will happily send the code on request.

(I will also add a section in the wiki including my own personal preferred method for this).

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syo_astro wrote:

elephantower wrote:Metasepia: Yes, my partner and I had the same question, and we emailed soinc for confirmation. You can indeed have multiple independent pendulums; as long as they fit into the alloted space.

I would be careful. Indeed it should fit inside the cube mentioned, but under Event Parameters rule f last sentence paraphrased: "...only one device can be impounded which will be used for all trials." made me a bit worried based on your phrasing. I don't see your clarification online, and if I was supervising I would may be consider not allowing it since I don't see this in the rule FAQs/clarifications online either. You don't really NEED multiple independent pendulums anyway. If you brought the email to competition maybe I would say OK to you (elephantower), but it doesn't seem worth it to use multiple independent pendulums (unless you really are using it as a whole as one device and it improves your accuracy).

Syo you'd make a terrible proctor
I assume it's not in the clarifications section because they thought it was too obvious an answer (apparently it only merited a 1-word reply).

I think the point of multiple pendulums is to average to improve your accuracy (which seems like a very effective strategy).

Hello, what types of clocks do you all think would be most important to study? There are so many kinds so I was wondering if there were any that you think would be more important to know about than others.
Thank you!!

sciama123 wrote:Hello, what types of clocks do you all think would be most important to study? There are so many kinds so I was wondering if there were any that you think would be more important to know about than others.
Thank you!!

I think there is no one best thing to study for this event. The rules are kept general probably on purpose. That is, probably you need to study at least a large variety of clocks. If you look it up, though, you can see some major sub-division that could help guide your search like mechanical, electrical, etc that could also help organize your notes. But there are many questions outside just pure clock stuff, so I really do recommend that the main thing is to keep organized.

syo_astro wrote:

sciama123 wrote:Hello, what types of clocks do you all think would be most important to study? There are so many kinds so I was wondering if there were any that you think would be more important to know about than others.
Thank you!!

I think there is no one best thing to study for this event. The rules are kept general probably on purpose. That is, probably you need to study at least a large variety of clocks. If you look it up, though, you can see some major sub-division that could help guide your search like mechanical, electrical, etc that could also help organize your notes. But there are many questions outside just pure clock stuff, so I really do recommend that the main thing is to keep organized.

Thank you!

Last minute questioning now that regionals are all starting...
What is an example of time terminology?

Um, how about "last minute?"