Article re: a deeper understanding of horology

[spectre6000]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-science-of-clocks-prompts-questions-about-the-nature-of-time-20210831/

Good read. Gets the brain a-tickin'

[Klassiker]

Interesting is what you say about something you doesn't understand, right? I found it very interesting. My brain stopped ticking trying to understand the ticking atoms.

[HectorLooi]

You can tell time with coffee?... Time for another cup!

“A clock is a flow meter for entropy,” said Milburn.

Lost me beyond this point. 

 

[KarlvonKoln]

The writer makes a very good point, in saying that anything can be a clock.  I would probably say, "Anything can be a *timepiece*".  But purpose-built clocks and watches are better suited to fulfilling that purpose than many other things that change with the passage of time.  Watches are like little measuring tapes for time.  You can set the hands to an agreed-upon starting point, and then the works will regulate either a battery-powered motor or an uncoiling spring to not uncoil or move any faster than the turning of the Earth itself.  These little marvels can track the passage of our plot of land around the axis as it moves into shadow and away from, then back toward, the sun's rays.  They can, on an analog dial, easily show the divisions of time remaining to us before we can eat or rest or dash off to appointments.  We watch the little markers as they measure, not millimeters but seconds, not meters but hours.  Marvelous things they are.  I love them.  And I love thinking about time.

[spectre6000]

6 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

“A clock is a flow meter for entropy,” said Milburn.

Entropy is a lack of order. Low entropy is perfect order, high entropy is completely evenly distributed chaos. If you take a handful of gas molecules in a two chamber box, they're pretty much never going to be all in one chamber because that's a state of very low entropy. The universe naturally wants to be uniform, and when we concentrate energy/mass, we make it less uniform; aka decrease its entropy. Energy/mass naturally wants to return to that more entropic state. Like heat dissipating throughout a room. Another example unfolding in front of me as I type this would be a toddler distributing toys, and releasing energy in the form of excited noises (only half joking with this one)...

Meanwhile, back at the lab...  Winding a mainspring concentrates energy, and it wants out. Entropy has been reduced, and the laws of thermodynamics demand that lack of order be restored. The escapement controls the release of that entropy, and the watch measures the flow of that release. Flow meter for entropy.

Anything can be a clock because everything is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, and will naturally seek maximum entropy. The challenge to making a cup of coffee a clock is knowing precisely how the entropy flows in that system within its environment, and then being able to measure it in a meaningful way. Heat distribution within a fluid, and across fluids of different viscosity (water and air) is extremely complex, and that's why coffee is a crappy clock. If you could figure out all the various intricacies of that energy flow (similar to the friction, metallurgy, lubrication, geometry, etc. in a clock), you could tell time with a cup of coffee.

There's a lot more to unpack in the article, I'm sure. I'll have to go back and re-read it when I have more time to noodle. It was a mind grapes squeezer for sure, and a fine mind wine takes time.

[spectre6000]

Jun Ye, the JILA guy interviewed in the article, just won a big award for that project! 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/09/nistjila-fellow-jun-ye-wins-breakthrough-prize-fundamental-physics

I've mentioned it on this forum before, but my best friend built the resonator (equivalent of the balance) for that device. Pretty exciting!

[spectre6000]

As if on cue:

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-world-accurate-clock-earth-cosmos.html

[LittleWatchShop]

Another article about the continuation of this work.

[JohnC]

On 9/9/2021 at 11:05 AM, spectre6000 said:

Jun Ye, the JILA guy interviewed in the article, just won a big award for that project! 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/09/nistjila-fellow-jun-ye-wins-breakthrough-prize-fundamental-physics

I've mentioned it on this forum before, but my best friend built the resonator (equivalent of the balance) for that device. Pretty exciting!

@spectre6000 Pointless name drop, but my brother was his graduate student at JILA. Don't worry, I am much less accomplished - but perhaps better with tweezers...

[spectre6000]

I'm not in anyway as accomplished as Jun Ye either, or even my friend who built that resonator for him. I just think it's cool and applicable to horology. We may know some of the same people. Are you in the area?

Since it's floated back to the top of the stack though, I saw a reference to Ye's project the other day. Seems the accuracy has been improved somewhat. Used to be it could track time dilation over a cm or so, and now it's down to a mm. An order of magnitude on something already that crazy is pretty awesome!