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Discussion for It's About Time C.

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Since I posted something in Air Trajectory, might as well give a high level overview of changes for It's About Time too. As always, you need to read the actual rules though to understand all the details:

-Tools / supplies etc don't need to be impounded
-Competitors can't be an integral part of the device, but can interact with it
-Event supervisors must conduct an example time trial to familiarize students with the sounds
-Written test topics completely revised to be 5 general areas
-Reduced number of time trials to 3 and altered the relative scoring of them
-No eye protection required

The 2016 rules state under Construction that "tally devices" are not allowed. What is considered a tally device?

MP Fan wrote:The 2016 rules state under Construction that "tally devices" are not allowed. What is considered a tally device?

Here is a tally device: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4 ... SY300_.jpg.

1) What is considered a "commercial time piece and their parts"? Are we allowed to purchase a clock-building kit?
2) Are allowed to buy gears? use gears from an old clock?

thank you.

nnguyen wrote:1) What is considered a "commercial time piece and their parts"? Are we allowed to purchase a clock-building kit?
2) Are allowed to buy gears? use gears from an old clock?

thank you.

1) I'd guess no.
2) Not sure; I've never taken this event.

Unome wrote:

nnguyen wrote:1) What is considered a "commercial time piece and their parts"? Are we allowed to purchase a clock-building kit?
2) Are allowed to buy gears? use gears from an old clock?

thank you.

1) I'd guess no.
2) Not sure; I've never taken this event.

If I were to take a guess, I'd think it would be okay to buy gears and make your own clock from that. Realize though that unlike old watches, you can't have a battery or power source. However I don't think you can use gears from an old clock. Something like taking apart an old watch and just "putting it back together" (sort of thing) would seem to me a "spirit of the rules" issue

Would it be possible to make a gear system for a pendulum that would count the number of swings, in order to make it much more convenient to keep track of? I did this event last year and it seemed to me that with the time being widely varied, it was somewhat difficult to keep track of the number of swings in a quiet room.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

TrueshotBarrage wrote:Would it be possible to make a gear system for a pendulum that would count the number of swings, in order to make it much more convenient to keep track of? I did this event last year and it seemed to me that with the time being widely varied, it was somewhat difficult to keep track of the number of swings in a quiet room.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

Yes, look into escapements. You might include a gear with increasing numbers written in a circle on it; as the gear turns, the number you're reading changes, reflecting the number of swings.

TrueshotBarrage wrote:Would it be possible to make a gear system for a pendulum that would count the number of swings, in order to make it much more convenient to keep track of? I did this event last year and it seemed to me that with the time being widely varied, it was somewhat difficult to keep track of the number of swings in a quiet room.
Any ideas would be appreciated.

You can do a lot of things, but it is all how wisely you spend you time .

More seriously, a hint off the top of my head would be clock faces. Think about how those work and where they come from. Why do we use them? Typically you graduate something to be able to measure it. Counting swings for a pendulum certainly is an example, but like you say it's harder to keep track of, which is why we improve our instrument. You can vary your gear system, sure, but there is an issue that comes up where you can go from a quiet room to an extremely noisy room, which becomes inconvenient. Bernard mentioned about escapements, but really you don't even need escapements iirc to get gears to work with a clock face. The problem you'll run into is spending energy on that process will perhaps dampen out the motion of your pendulum way too quickly, such that you'll need escapements that help increase the efficiency of your system.

I hope that helps!