The Luminous Time Tracker

Hello and welcome to my final blog post for my class, Light, Sound, and Time. For this final unit, we looked into the concept of time and how it can be used in different ways. Time is duration of existence that can be measured and can be tracked through events like the growth of plants, the life span of animals, and changes in the environment. Another way to look at time is that it can be a sequence of events that are measured over existence. We also looked at the cosmic calendar to understand the length of our universe if it was shortened into 12 months. One of the most fundamental skills we learned was the concept of E = MC^2. This equation means energy = mass x speed of light^2. With that equation, it helped scientists to understand concepts of time like the twin paradox, dilation, and many other concepts we still use today. This led to us looking into the concepts of clocks, which are ways that time can be tracked over a certain distance. Some of the clocks we learned about were sundials and the different ways people used them. 

"Astronomical Clock, Prague" by jay8085 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The intention with this final action project is to create a clock of our own along with a video presenting the idea. The idea that I came up with called The Luminous Time Tracker. My video refers to the clock as the box of time but they are both the same concept. 

Here's a video that explains it more in depth. Special shout out to KT for helping me with the visuals: 

For my clock, I used inches to measure its volume and other dimensions that's all located below:

 

Length: 10.5 in  

Height: 6 in 

Width: 7 in 

Volume = L x W x H

10.5 x 7 x 6 = 441 in^3 

The visual below explains how I used the Pythagorean theorem to understand my clock's measurements.

I found the hypotenuse of my Time Tracker using the Pythagorean theorem:

10.5^2 + 6^2 = 146.25 in -> (square root) = 12.09 in

Here’s a clear visual on how the Luminous Time Tracker would look inside:

"The Luminous Time Tracker display", RBL, 2023

My tracker clock gets the signal to measure time from a connection to a satellite in space similarly to our phones. It has a microchip inside of it that picks up the signal on the go, or inside a home. With this, it can make sure that the time is able to be adjusted easily and making it clear how the time can change given certain circumstances. 

For this being the last project of class, it makes me disappointed that we have to move on to a new topic. With this in mind, I found this project to feel rushed because it ended up being done on the last week of school. The most difficult part of this project for me was figuring out a way to add audio to my video that made sense. One thing I did enjoy about it was getting all of my drawings for it and understanding how they can show off my clock. If I were to do this again, I'd want to see if I could make a clock based off a Gnomon clock or a sundial.