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| Wednesday, March 18, 2009 |
| Time - you ain't no friend of mine |
As anyone who has visited my office knows, the walls here are pretty bare. There's a few plaques (Highest team score and most lost balls at the U of A staff golf tourney - score!), a crooked cork board, and a clock.
Well the clock has been broken pretty much since I got here. I've replaced the batteries twice trying to get it to work, but it just never keeps accurate time. However, I don't want to take it down as to remove 1/4 of the decor on my walls. Nor do I want the ELC to buy me a new clock as really, who uses clocks anymore.
Anyway people have always commented on it and the other day I randomly looked at it and noticed it was correct. I began to wonder how often this happens. I was talking to Chas, our computer kid (probably not his actual title) and told him I'd give him a dollar if he could figure it out. What I didn't consider was, that once he gave me an answer I'd have to confirm the result.
Once he figured out his answer, I hatched a plan involving Microsoft access and excel, and literally 1 million lines of data. This plan failed. I was reduced to finding the answer algebraically. Which took much shorter than the excel method anyway (if you've ever put 1,000,000 lines of data into excel, it makes my fancy schmancy work computer respond like my vintage desktop circa 2001).
So anyway, long story short. If you're bored and feel like solving a riddle, here goes. My clock is 4 seconds slow, meaning that when a normal clock has finished its rotation for a minute and the second hand is at 12, mine is at 56 seconds. The next minute it would be at 52 seconds, and so on. How often is my clock right? (disregarding AM/PM) |
posted by Brian @ 12:16 PM  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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That is a great question and one I choose not to answer. Because I come here to get away from work, not do more. But I'll give it a random guess of 45 times a day? hahaha
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Ha, kinda close, but the answer is actually every 7.5 days. At 4 min slow it takes 15 hours for the clock to fall behind 1 hour, meaning it takes 180 hours to fall behind 12 hours. 180 hours = 7.5 days.
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Here is what I just read... math, math, math, mathy, math...boring. But kinda neat (just don't tell anyone I said that). hahaha!
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That is a great question and one I choose not to answer. Because I come here to get away from work, not do more. But I'll give it a random guess of 45 times a day? hahaha