Clock of the Long Second

clock (noun)
a mechanical or electrical device for measuring time, indicating hours, minutes, and sometimes seconds by hands on a round dial or by displayed figures.

In this continuation of the Feynman Clock, I chose to focus on designing a clock that would most clearly demonstrate the concept of Gravitational Time Dilation at the human scale. To do this I designed a white monolith standing at 180cm (6 feet) which contained a small amount of ferrofluid suspended in isopropyl alcohol held between two pieces of class (one white and one clear). A set of 22 electro magnets behind the white class pull the ferrofluid up to the height of a person's head and/or balloon. The Clock would be powered using a RaspberryPi device hooked up to a Xbox Kinect to sense a person's presence and control the electro magnets.

As building the actual Clock was not possible given the time constraint, I chose to make a stop motion animation demonstrating the Clock at work in a public space. I used watercolors in the animation to continue with the fluid qualities of the ferrofluid and time itself.

The animation is accompanied by a booklet briefly describing the the history of a second and describing in detail how the Clock works.

The narration for the film was done by Sian Williams.

It is still my intent to build the Clock in the near future.