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Confusa-Clock

Inspired by [21 Quest]’s “Joke Clock” idea, and the “Heavy hands of time” comment that someone annoed to it.
  (+11)(+11)
(+11)
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against]

Picture a clock with no numbers on its face. It has markings for each hour, each half-hour, and maybe even each minute – but none of them has any definite label attached.

The round clock is attached to the wall via a single screw at its very centre. Around this fixed point is an almost frictionless bearing, which means that the whole clock can be spun very easily about this central axis.

The workings of the clock are distributed evenly throughout its unseen innards, but together they constitute a hardy, robust little mechanism that can shunt clock hands forwards no matter what its orientation is.

The minute and hour hands are both weighted, so the clock twists and turns on the wall throughout the day, more a slave to gravity than to time. The second hand, with its sixty-second orbit, just confuses matters all the more.

I really wanted to find a mechanism whereby the moving hands could have variable weight and thus churn the clock even more unexpectedly – lava lamp clock hands was the best I could come up with.

lostdog, Oct 09 2007

Franck Muller - Crazy Hours http://www.essentia...unt=12&itemID=12235
A watch that jumps all around on the hour to find it's right place. [k_sra, Oct 10 2007]


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Annotation:







       [+]. I don't think you'd need variable- weight hands - I suspect that the rotation caused by three heavy (but constantly heavy) hands moving at different speeds would be chaotic enough.   

       For added chaos, put either the fixing screw or the axis of the hands slightly off-centre. Better yet, have the axes of the second, minute and hour hands in slightly different places (this can be done). The result will be visually disturbing, and the motion all the more chaotic.
MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 09 2007
  

       And the hour hand period should be 13 hours.
xipetotec, Oct 09 2007
  

       I'd be proud to own a Confusa-Clock [+]   

       I think it would be cooler if the innards were visible, and themselves wacky. Perhaps there could be planetary gears working in a ratcheting motion and shaking violently. Would be whimsical enough for me.
Spacecoyote, Oct 10 2007
  

       D'oh!   

       (+)   

       The halfbakery is full of purposeful ideas that would never work. This falls firmly into the opposite category. I like it!
theNakedApiarist, Oct 10 2007
  

       goes good with your crazy hours Franck Muller watch [link].
k_sra, Oct 10 2007
  

       You can't put a price tag on craziness.
Texticle, Oct 10 2007
  

       Build it, I'll buy it. But not for $13,900.
wagster, Oct 10 2007
  

       i know a guy who owns one. he's indian. sikh actually. shows it to everyone. i'm pretty sure it's not a knock-off.
k_sra, Oct 11 2007
  


 

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