Proof of what a sad git I am

peasant

My Vostok Europe rocket N1 has a Vostok movment with indirectly driven second hand.

These movements are known to produce the odd stutter in the second hand, where it stops and then speeds up again. Mine doesn't do that ...but for months now I've been convinced that, while it was running, it wasn't running quite consistently.

It's kind of hard to prove though ..glancing at the watch, glancing at the computer screen (time.is on full screen), trying to figure out is it slow or fast or what. After a while you think you're imagining things.

So today, while outside it was grey and drizzly, I sat down with the stopwatch and an excel file and I timed all the five second intervals between 0-60 five times each, worked out the average and came up with this:



A little graph that shows that the second hand is indeed consistently inconsistent

It runs slow in some sectors and fast in others ...while still taking exactly 60 seconds to complete one round. So this doesn't affect timekeeping, it's just a display issue.

(and before an even sadder git then me points out that the total of the sectors isn't exactly 60 ...I'm aware of that. Something to do with measuring inconsistencies, averages and rounding, ok ...)

Bullseye1

The bad weather eh!

Reloc8

Oh my...you've got it baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad

The Internet Explorer

I'm embarrassed.

flutered

it needs to be defraffed

peasant

Bullseye1 wrote: »

The bad weather eh!

Well there's that ...and then I've got this lovely little stopwatch that makes that chunky "klonk" noise when you press the buttons and that lovely ticking noise when it's running and you have to find reasons to use it and ....emmm ...errr ...yes...

Weather WAS shoyte though, wasn't it just?


:D:D

m4r10

At least it keeps you from buying more watches.

Monty Burnz

How did you do the timing? You might have introduced errors here unless you did it *thinks of a statistically significant number* a billion times.

peasant

Monty Burnz wrote: »

How did you do the timing? You might have introduced errors here unless you did it *thinks of a statistically significant number* a billion times.

Of course I have introduced errors. I tried to time the interval between the second hand passing over one five minute marker and the next. There are errors in reading the pasage correctly, pressing the button just at the right split second and at reading thestopwatch dial as well ...a whole succession of errors.

But it's as good (or bad) and as statistically significant as one guy with two eyes, at least one working hand and an old mechanical stopwatch will get it ...doing it a million times more will just introduce a million more errors

Monty Burnz

peasant wrote: »

But it's as good (or bad) and as statistically significant as one guy with two eyes, at least one working hand and an old mechanical stopwatch will get it ...doing it a million times more will just introduce a million more errors

Indeed, but the law of large numbers tells us that these errors will even out. Back to work!

peasant

The errors might even out, the fact that the second hand on my watch is irregular won't though

Zagato

If you send me the excel file, I'll have a go at sticking it into SPSS, and if I was any good should at least be able to give you a bar chart with some error bars, and you could see if the differences are real or could be explained by chance (this is presuming that you have no bias)

peasant

That's really not necessary

You can see with the naked eye that the second hand is running irregulalry ...fast in some areas and slow in others ...always the same areas as well.

The excercise with the stopwatch just helped to confirm it and put a nice pie chart with the issue.