The Water Clock 5000

In the last unit of Light Sound and Time, we talked about time. We learned a lot about different ways to tell time. We focused mainly on unorthodox ways of telling time such as a sundial, time zones, and a pendulum. We had the opportunity to visit the Chicago Lighthouse which is an organization that helps people who are blind. Inside their building, they have a factory where they make clocks for federal buildings around the country. For the Action Project in this unit, I had to design my own time telling device. I decided to create a water clock that descends from the clepsydra. It was tricky at first to figure out what kind of device I wanted to make. I am proud of the device I designed and I think that it came out looking exactly how I wanted it to look.
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Many cultures decided to create a water clock after they realized that the sundial was not very useful since it could only be used in sunlight. The first water clock or the clepsydra was seen in 1500 BC, inside the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep I. There were two types: outflow and inflow. The inflow water clocks were small bowls that were placed above a large basin of water. In the small bowl, there was a hole in the center which would flow the water into the larger bowl. The clock’s attendant would have to check in periodically and once the tub was filled to a certain point, he would have to let everyone know that an interval of time had passed. He would then empty the large tub and let the clock reset. The outflow water clocks were similar to the inflow in the sense that they both used dripping water, but this version would only have one bowl of water with lines of measurement on the inside that would leak at a steady pace. After a while, the attendant would measure the remaining water in the bowl according to the lines and that way he would know how much time has passed. The clepsydra can be used as a timer or a clock. This clock was mainly used to time speeches in courts in Athens. For example, "Some Athenian sources indicate that the water clock was used during the speeches of various well-known Greeks, including Aristotle, Aristophanes the playwright, and Demosthenes the statesman," (Ḏḥwty, The Ancient Invention of the Water Clock). The water clock also prevented people’s speeches from running too long. Depending on the type of speech or trial that was going on, different amounts of water would be put into the bowls. My device and the klepsydra are related in the sense that they both use water. My clock however can not act as a timer, only a clock.

The device I created is a large box. It is not something that you can take around but maybe later in production if it is successful there could be a handheld version. My device measures minutes and hours. There are 12 tubes on the top, in the middle there is a section filled with water, and then at the bottom there are 60 tubes. Depending on the time, the corresponding tubes would fill up with water. For example, if it was 4:34, the 4th tube on the top would be filled while the other ones are empty and 34 tubes on the bottom would be filled while the rest are empty. There are also different colored lights in each of the tubes so that each one can light up to show you the time as well. My device is an unorthodox clock. It isn’t just your generic wall clock, it incorporates water to show the time. My water clock is better because it would be incredibly accurate, it would be a mix of a digital and analog clock since there are no minute hands.

My device applies the concept of pi because my device uses a lot of circles. The height of all 12 cylinders on the top of my device is 8 and the radius is 2. In order to calculate the volume of this, I had to multiply π 2^2 x 8 = 100.53 For the cylinders on the bottom, the radius is also 2 but the height is 6. In order to calculate the volume of these tubes, I had to multiply π 2^2 x 6 = 75.4 . The circumference of the circle on top of all the tubes is  π4 ( the equation is pi x diameter and since the radius is 2, 2+2=4) which equals 4 or approximately 12.5.

Works Cited:

Mintz, Daniel. "Timekeeping in the Ancient World: Water-clocks." Water-clocks. N.p., Apr. 2007. Web. 17 Mar. 2016. <http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Water_clocks.html>.

Ḏḥwty. "The Ancient Invention of the Water Clock." Ancient Origins. N.p., 3 July 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2016. <http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/ancient-invention-water-clock-001818>.