Guten Tag Herrin Und Etwas;

That Is All Fine And Well
But According to them who knows
at the Universities and
in Corporate America The days for
Discovery By the Single individual
were over quite some time ago.
Practically everything easy to
Discover has already been discovered
and today it takes the resources and
monies of Nations to Discover anything
New that is worthwhile.
That is why people like DEC and Probably
HP and others make their workers
Sign a legal agreement that while
they work and ten years after they dont
they must get the approval from who they
used to work for before taking any
personal credt for patents and stuff.
THIS is why I do not take any Amature group
very serious. Unless they have been invaded somehow
by professionals instead of amateures ( people who get
no money for what they do ).

Regards
geoff

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Randall Peters" 
To: 
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2007 7:40 AM
Subject: horologist input


> Bob,
>    Thanks for your comments.  To the rest of you readers--clockmakers have indeed learned a great deal
> about the issues we've been discussing.  When I wrote an article about a flex-pendulum, online at
> http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0306/0306088.pdf
>  Bob or one of his associates (I've got so much going on right now I haven't taken time to dig out the letter, and 'senior 
> moments' seem to be unavoidable)  pointed out to me that similar studies have been done in the past as part of the effort to 
> improve horology.  As noted in his letter, it would be difficult to come up with an idea that is
> truly original.
>    This points to the following fact--we collectively (amateur seismology and horology) have something
> truly significant to offer the world of seismology.  Anybody who has seriously tinkered with mechanical oscillators knows that 
> friction is the 'name of the game' when it comes to the design of a seismometer.  Because nobody properly understands from theory 
> the friction responsible for instrument limitations, experiment is the key to success.  Faraday and others were not above 
> 'dirtying their hands' to see what worked.  In his case, what proved
> successful had nothing to do with 'eyewash' (beautifully crafted but worthless instruments)--rather the focus was
> on the 'truth' of the physics.   For those of you who know little about Faraday, I recommend that you read the
> following
> http://www.rigb.org/heritage/faradaypage.jsp
> If you look at the many discoveries that he made, you'll see that his methods of doing science were not what we
> see for the most part today.  In my career I've seen a tragic progression into what can best be described as
> "data-taking technicians" who have little practical knowledge of the instruments they use.  Scientists who try,
> or even think about building their own instruments are an increasingly rare scientific commodity. This is tragic because the 
> approach departs radically from the methods on which physics was founded.  I have attempted to document these claims in the 
> chapter,  "Building on old foundations with new technologies", part of a book scheduled for release in January, by Nova Science 
> Publishers, titled  "Science education in the
> 21st century"  .ISBN: 1-60021-951-9
>   On separate matters:
> Ian,
>    your paper-mate-lubriglide pendulum is great!   I am curious, however, as to why you want to use
> the messy oil (or any other) damper.  The primary reason for eliminating transient response is for purpose
> of conventional data interpretation.  The inability to distinguish between Love and Rayleigh waves (as an example) because of the 
> spherical motion means this is not very important for your system.  Moreover, the period (which I missed if you mentioned it) is I 
> suspect long enough that local noise disturbances are not as important as otherwise might be the case and for which conventional 
> damping helps a lot. To just see earthquakes (for an alarms, as an example) you are likely to be better off eliminating the
> damping--partly because dithering by local noises is actually an advantage.  I know that some folks believe that such an approach 
> is tantamount to 'heresy'.  I have already
> proven to my own satisfaction that what I'm saying is not ridiculous.  Moreover, I personally believe that strong resistance to 
> the thought suggests some of the blindness that results when we get trapped in the rut of conventional
> thinking.  As I heard a theologian once say, a 'rut' is a 'coffin' with the ends kicked out.
>    Meredith,
> You mention 'standard' crossed rods oscillating up to about 4 times longer than your present arrangement
> with magnets.  If your 'standard' setup has no magnets, then I predict that a big part of this difference derives
> from eddy current damping due to the induced currents in the steel rods as the oscillate in the strong magnetic
> field of your gold-coated units.  This eddy current component is not a 'show-stopper' like the mechnical
> internal friction parts.  It is actually advantageous.
>  Randall
>
>
> 

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