🚀 go-pugleaf

On 10 Jun 1996 18:12:45 GMT, rmarkd@uclink2.berkeley.edu (Mark Rajesh Das)
wrote:

>Kevin D. Quitt (kdq@emoryi.jpl.nasa.gov) wrote:
>
>: Temperature, according to the brochures.  And it's as "near" to perpetual
>: motion as anyone is likely to get.
>
> this is possibly misleading ( at least to me) 
>Perpetual motion, at the very least, would be 100% efficient. So are you saying
>that this clock is closest to 100% efficiency or that the energy source is the
>most inconspicuous?                                               
> 
>Or am I scoring touchdowns in a baseball game?

Actually, it is extremely efficient.  The pendulum runs at 1/60 Hz, spinning
suspended by a special spring (I don't remember why the metal is so wonderful
but I remember an entire section of the brochure discussing it).

And I considered it interesting because the energy source *is* so
inconspicuous.  That, coupled with a 400 day spring, would make it very
difficult indeed to prove in a lab that this isn't a perpetual motion device.

The original question asked about interesting "near" examples; I felt this
clock qualified by being so subtle about it.

-- 
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Kevin D Quitt  USA 91351-4454           96.37% of all statistics are made up
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