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Re: Big Ben...



On Sat, 28 Sep 1996 22:12:59 -0400 Robert Curtis said:
Bob, Did the BBs go on top of the bob? Did adding BBs make the clocks
run faster or slower?


Your question reminds me of what I call my college--actually the
Jesuit Novitiate and Juniorate at St Andrew-on-Hudson, just north
of Poughkeepsie, New York, in Hyde Park. (Now it's the
Culinary Institute of America.) At any rate the large bells and
all the solenoid driven electric clocks in the building (dating
from 1905) were controlled by a pendulum in the attic. We students
were all assigned jobs and took care of just about everyting....
including the clocks. We added bee-bees to change the period of
the pendulum.... I always took it for granted that we were changing
the effective length of this physical pendulum by altering the
center of gravity of the bob. This had to be done twice a year
because of the extreme difference in temperature in the attic
in winter and summer, which also presumably changed the effective
length of the pendulum.

Bob Curtis
_____
Robert Kern Curtis Hackensack, New Jersey
bcurtis@email.njin.net rkc1@village.ios.com
Home Page: http://village.ios.com/~rkc1/rkc.shtml
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