Last weekend, I reset most of my clocks for daylight time. Today, I was rummaging around in my basement storeroom and it occurred to me that I hadn't reset the clock I have in there. As it happened, the battery in that clock had died and the clock had stopped.
On my way to get a fresh battery, I remembered another clock in another infrequently visited corner of the basement. Might as well reset that clock while I'm thinking of it, right? Turns out, the battery in that clock had also died and that clock had also stopped.
There are 720 minutes on the clock. If they are truly stopped at random, the odds of them being within 1 minute are 1 in 720, within 2 minutes 1 in 360, etc.
So you're lucky but not powerball lucky.
If they are stopped because the battery is getting weak, there is a prejudice for stopping while the hands are climbing instead of falling, so it is probably more likely than the computation would indicate.
heh... When was the last time you changed the batteries? Both at the same time?
How do you know one wasn't p.m. and the other a.m.?
> How do you know one wasn't p.m. and the other a.m.?
I don't. For all I know one could have been October and one could have been January.
I would suspect that the power required to lift the hand at that point is more than other areas of the clock. Easer to let the hand fall than to lift it. While it would only be a very slight difference, it would be enough to make it more likely to stop in that general area.
> I would suspect that the power required to lift the hand at that point is more than other areas of the clock. Easer to let the hand fall than to lift it. While it would only be a very slight difference, it would be enough to make it more likely to stop in that general area.
yes that would explain the minute hand, but what about the hour hand?It has not even reached the six position. The sixosition is the point with minimal torque requirement since gravity is helping it to reach the nadir position.
Everyone has missed the obvious
Which is easier? Photoshopping the pix or setting both to the same time? Anyone could have done that to the second clock anytime between when the second one failed and our photographer found both of them.
I hope this doesn't happen to my Hipers.
> There are 720 minutes on the clock. If they are truly stopped at random, the odds of them being within 1 minute are 1 in 720, within 2 minutes 1 in 360, etc.
That is the chance of 1 clock stopping at any particular time. The chance of them both stopping within the same 2 minute span would be 1 in 360 squared, or 1 in about 130,000. That is if it's a random event.
I would guess that there is something in the clock works that causes them to finally stop at about that minute. There are 2 clocks similar to those pictured here in my basement office that have stopped. One at 5 minutes to the hour, the other at 12 minutes to the hour.
