Tag: time

The Advent of the Ancient Egyptian Clepsydra (Water Clock)

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The Clepsydra (pronounced “clep-see-drah”), more commonly referred to as the “water clock”, was among the earliest technological devices engineered for measuring time, predating mechanical clocks by over a millennia. The earliest known example of a clepsydra is from Ancient Egypt, constructed close to 1400 B.C., and attributed to an Egyptian court official named “Amenemhet” (pronounced “ah-men-ehm-het”). Clepsydra clocks operated using 1 of 2 primary designs; which includes both outflow and inflow setups. In an outflow clepsydra, water exited the chamber container through a small hole at the bottom, and the measurement of time was tracked by the continually lowered water level which was measured against internal markings. Inflow clepsydras reversed this design setup with water entering a marked container vessel, and the continually rising water level indicating the amount of time which had elapsed. The main challenge of the inflow and outflow designs was maintaining a consistent flow rate of water because as water drained, pressure dropped which slowed the drip rate and skewed the clocks accuracy. Ancient Greek engineer Ctesibius (pronounced “teh-sib-ee-us”) addressed this problem by introducing an overflow tank with a fixed water level, ensuring constant pressure and uniform water flow at all times. Ctesibius also added a float regulated valve system, an early feedback mechanism designed to stabilize inflow of water and prevent overflow, much the same as the float controlled fill valve (e.g. ballcock, float cup valve, diaphragm type inlet valve etc.) installed within toilets during the modern day. Subsequent future cepsydra designs implemented gears and escape mechanisms to convert water movement into mechanical energy/motion. Chinese engineers expanded further upon the concept of the clepsydra by introducing polyvascular systems, in which water flowed through multiple containment vessels in an effort to better regulate timing intervals. These innovations permitted water clocks to function independently of sunlight unlike sundials, the prevailing time keeping technology throughout history, and laid the foundation for regulated mechanical timekeeping which proceeded it. Despite limitations (e.g. temperature dependent viscosity, leakage and evaporation, the need for constant manual maintenance by human beings etc.), clepsydras remained in use for centuries and were the first controlled, replicable timekeeping systems in history only falling out of fashion during the late Middle Ages due to the ascendency of mechanical, pendulum and gear based clocks

The Reason Mercury’s Orbit Around the Sun Appears Retrograde From Earth

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Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity can be proven because of how Mercury orbits the Sun. Isaac Newton correctly explained how and why planets orbit the Sun, but because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it orbited its center star 7% faster than it should have therefore Mercury is close enough to the Sun that its space-time path is warped because of the mass of the Sun and this warping causes Mercury to orbit faster than planets further away. For many decades scientists hypothesized there was another planet, unseen yet, which gave Mercury an extra push. This additional planet was prematurely named “Vulcan”, which was in vain because no such planet ever existed. It was also theorized that cosmological dust gave Mercury its extra boost or that an unseen asteroid or asteroid field was helping Mercury along. It wasn’t until Albert Einstein proposed that all matter cuts through both space and time, following a curve, that the catalyst could be definitively proven. If a sphere rolled along a table and suddenly hit a dip, it would speed up and change its trajectory. This is essentially what occurs within space-time and is the reason Isaac Newton’s Universal Laws of Gravitation don’t quite fit with Mercury. Mercury is close enough to the Sun that its space-time path is warped because of the mass of the Sun and this warping causes Mercury to orbit faster than planets further away. It is not only Mercury which does this; any planet or body near its host star will orbit slightly faster than planets or bodies further away. Although it is impossible to visually see the curvature and bending of space-time, it can be definitively proven because of the way large bodies of matter affect smaller bodies of matter due to the mass of each body

The Problem With Super Massive Black Holes

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Super massive black holes have a fundamental problem in that not enough time has passed since the creation of the universe to account for their massive size. This acute time crunch is because the universe has a finite value of only 13,700,000,000 (13.7 billion) years. It is theorized that the reason super massive black holes can become larger than what time permits is because they have a colossal head start due to the fact that they may be birthed directly from a cloud of gas, a phenomena referred to as “direct collapse”. These molecular clouds collapse under their own gravity, and as they collapse, fragmentation occurs as more densely packed areas collapse more quickly. Nuclear fusion begins next and a star is thus created. If a giant gas cloud collapses without making a star, it would form a gas disc instead, allowing the mass to flow into the center very rapidly, creating a black hole instead which is essentially a vortex upon an immense scale

The Origin of the Tradition of Bringing Christmas Trees Indoors

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During the Ancient Roman Saturnalia festival near the winter solstice, coniferous branches, boughs, and trees were brought indoors and kept. Although the exact rationale is debated, the concept may have developed as a means to symbolize everlasting life and/or as a method to ensure the god Saturn, the patron deity of time, wealth, and agriculture among other things within Ancient Rome, would prolong summer and shorten winter. In the 4th century A.D. this festival was replaced by the Christian holiday of Christmas which adopted the practice of bringing trees indoors as well. It should be noted, bringing coniferous trees indoors during the winter solstice was a pagan tradition throughout the northern hemisphere, with multiple cultures and empires outside of the Ancient Romans adopting the practice

The Reason the World Clock Starts in Greenwich, England

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The reason the world clock starts in Greenwich, England is because during the 19th century, the majority of sea charts used Greenwich, England as the Prime Meridian for the 0° coordinate. In addition to this, during the early advent of the British railway network, trains could end up in accidents if the timing of coming into and/or out of stations was off by even a small margin of error. Because the sun rises earlier in some parts of Britain and later in the rest, these variables needed to be compensated for which was accomplished by introducing more accurate clocks and the concept of time zones. Up until this point, horsepower was the fastest way to travel and because of that, sundials which had been invented in and used since the 9th century A.D., were satisfactory. It was only with the emergence of locomotives that this system of time keeping became antiquated

The Reason Carbonated Drinks Become Flat

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Carbonated drinks are in a state of super saturation in respect to how much carbon dioxide they contain. Once a solution has reached complete saturation, it won’t allow any more of whatever substance is saturating it. If salt is added to a glass of water, eventually it will reach a point in which the salt just falls to the bottom rather than being dissolved in the water due to over saturation. If a solution is heated, it will be able to tolerate higher levels of saturation, and if it is cooled it is able to tolerate lesser levels of saturation. Carbonated drinks are water saturated with carbon dioxide, and this carbon dioxide is always looking for a method to escape which is why all carbonated drinks eventually turn flat provided enough time has passed. When sugar is added to a carbonated drink, the sugar nucleates the drink in that it provides a method of escape for the carbon dioxide present. Sugar, Mentos, and other various substances have a large surface area which allows a lot of carbon dioxide to become attached to it resulting in a rapid escape

The End of the Universe and the Big Crunch Theory

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The likelihood of a Big Crunch in which the universe expands to the point that it then collapses inward upon itself is not very probable as mathematical calculations demonstrate that there simply isn’t enough mass in the entire universe to be able to revert into into an enormous compaction. The idea of the universe folding in upon itself can be visualized by imagining a person throwing a ball in the air. The Earth has enough mass to bring a thrown ball back down to the ground but if thrown faster than the speed of escape velocity which is 11.186 kilometers per second, a thrown ball would never come back down, in fact, it would travel an infinite distance over an infinite timespan before the Earth mathematically had enough time and mass to pull the ball back to its starting position. The universe is represented by the Earth in that it acts as a force upon other objects and the ball represents all matter throughout the universe in this thought experiment