London's Big Ben Mysteriously Stops Ticking!!!

[Mycroft]

London's Big Ben Mysteriously Stops Ticking

LONDON — Big Ben (search), the landmark London clock renowned for its accuracy and chimes, stopped ticking for 90 minutes, an engineer said Saturday.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C157985%2C00.html

Oh my gawd!! How could this have happened?!

Wait, I think I may have solved the mystery:

Officials do not know why the 147-year-old clock on the banks of the River Thames stopped at 10:07 p.m. Friday. It resumed keeping time, but stalled again at 10:20 p.m. and remained still for about 90 minutes before starting up again, a spokeswoman for the House of Commons (search) said on condition of anonymity, citing government policy.

It's 147 years old!!! What do they expect?!

[KelvinG]

Uri Geller did it.

[Nitpick]

Officials do not know why the 147-year-old clock on the banks of the River Thames stopped at 10:07 p.m. Friday. It resumed keeping time, but stalled again at 10:20 p.m...
It's a miracle! The long awaited message for 1inChrist!

Matthew 10:7 : "As you go, proclaim: The rule of God is at hand."

Matthew10:20 : "For you are not the one who speaks, but the Spirit of God speaks in you."

;)

[Darat]

Friday was the hottest day in May in London for something like 50 years, perhaps the clockwork heated up a bit quicker then normal?

As for the complaint about it being 147 years old, I have to agree with that - like most modern clocks it is very unreliable.



http://www.stonehengephotos.net/sitebuilder/images/DD2LowRez-250x161.jpg

[asthmatic camel]

Originally posted by Darat
Friday was the hottest day in May in London for something like 50 years, perhaps the clockwork heated up a bit quicker then normal?

As for the complaint about it being 147 years old, I have to agree with that - like most modern clocks it is very unreliable.



http://www.stonehengephotos.net/sitebuilder/images/DD2LowRez-250x161.jpg

Darat, I'm very much afraid that Gordon Brown is the culprit: he taxed Big Ben by artificially inflating the value of the coins used to regulate the swing of its pendulum.

Nothing's sacred. :(

[Chaos]

Wasn´t there a James Bond movie in which the Big Ben stopping was a signal to the Bad Guy that they´d agree to his demands?

[shanek]

Pardon my pedantry, but isn't Big Ben the bell and not the clock?

[Darat]

Originally posted by asthmatic camel
Darat, I'm very much afraid that Gordon Brown is the culprit: he taxed Big Ben by artificially inflating the value of the coins used to regulate the swing of its pendulum.

Nothing's sacred. :(

Never mind, it might mean when you are 96 there will be a few pennies for you to earn by winding it up every day... ;) And didn't you notice the picture I put up of one of the new properties available under his new "help the first time buyers scheme" - according to the estate agents it is in need of some renovation!


Doesn’t Big Ben’s clock still use one of the obsolete pre-decimal pennies as adjustments?

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by asthmatic camel
Darat, I'm very much afraid that Gordon Brown is the culprit: he taxed Big Ben by artificially inflating the value of the coins used to regulate the swing of its pendulum.


Isn't it the length of the chain and not the weight of the pendulum that regulates its swing?

[asthmatic camel]

The idiom of putting a penny on, with the meaning of slowing down, sprung from the method of fine-tuning the clock's pendulum by adding or subtracting penny-coins. Even to this day, only old pennies, phased out of British currency during the 1971 decimalisation, are used.

http://www.answers.com/topic/big-ben

ETA link.

[Darat]

Originally posted by Mycroft
Isn't it the length of the chain and not the weight of the pendulum that regulates its swing?

I may be wrong about this since my recollection is from watching Blue Peter ...

...but I think they move a weight up and down the pendulum to change it's swing, and some of the weights are pre-decimal pennies and ha'pennies

[asthmatic camel]

Originally posted by Mycroft
Isn't it the length of the chain and not the weight of the pendulum that regulates its swing?

The swing of the pendulum is not automatically powered, but relies on people to add power to the system. Therefore, any increase in weight/mass to the pendulum will affect the rate at which it oscillates, and thus the clock's timekeeping.

It's 24 years since I studied any physics, so I can only hope I'm in the ballpark.

[Ian Osborne]

Originally posted by shanek
Pardon my pedantry, but isn't Big Ben the bell and not the clock?

Yes you're quite right, though many incorrectly refer to the entire clock tower as Big Ben.

[Tanja]

The clock must have stopped because that spaceship from Dorcor Who parked next to it again...:)

[Darat]

Originally posted by Tanja
The clock must have stopped because that spaceship from Dorcor Who parked next to it again...:)

And did you notice how quickly it was repaired after the Slitheen ship flew into it? Incredible!

[Ian Osborne]

Originally posted by Darat
And did you notice how quickly it was repaired after the Slitheen ship flew into it? Incredible!

Maybe the nanobots from this week's episode were still around...

[shanek]

Originally posted by Ian Osborne
Maybe the nanobots from this week's episode were still around...

Grumble grumble...You had to remind me that you guys are getting new Doctor Who episodes...grumble grumble...

[Darat]

Originally posted by shanek
Grumble grumble...You had to remind me that you guys are getting new Doctor Who episodes...grumble grumble...

And it's very good...

(Although I suspect some people are going to wonder what happened in the TARDIS after the end of last night’s episode.)

[asthmatic camel]

Originally posted by Darat
And it's very good...

(Although I suspect some people are going to wonder what happened in the TARDIS after the end of last night’s episode.)

Darat, it's part of the Dr. Who plot that he never gets the girl. That role's reserved for James Tiberius Kirk who is in charge of a far larger machine which also operates in the realm of space time.

;)

[Walter Wayne]

On the pendulum question, the statement that the period of a pendulum's swing is solely dependant on length is an approximation, though in general a good approximation.

Most pendulum's are built with a heavy weight on the end of a light chain or rod. The greater the mass ratio between end weight and chain the better the approximation works.

For oddly shaped pendulums or for very precise calculations one must look at the moment of inertia of the entire pendulum, and not the simplified version used in most cases.

Walt

[davefoc]

I was at first attracted to this thread because Mycroft initiated it. This peaked my interest because I was trying to imagine what the middle east/Muslim tie in to Big Ben could be. But perhaps Mycroft has initiated a thread about something unrelated to that and if so what could that topic be. Surely not that a clock in England had a minor malfunction. But intriguingly that was exactly what the thread was about. But then once it was clear that this was what the thread was about 18 other people had something to say about it.

What in the world could those 18 people have to say about this topic? Well, now I know and I am a little happier and a little more informed than I was before. But maybe I don't know and the thread was really about something else all along, because clearly the fact that a clock in England had a minor glitch is of so little interest to anybody except maybe the guy who maintains it that the thread was really about something else and I am the only one who doesn't know it.

[Bearguin]

Originally posted by Chaos
Wasn´t there a James Bond movie in which the Big Ben stopping was a signal to the Bad Guy that they´d agree to his demands?


From http://www.quizland.com/f2quiz.mv?f5+NOMUSIC

In "Thunderball", how did the world's governments indicate their acceptance of Blofeld's demands?
Your answer: Ringing Big Ben seven times at 6 o'clock.
CORRECT!!!

[asthmatic camel]

Originally posted by Walter Wayne
On the pendulum question, the statement that the period of a pendulum's swing is solely dependant on length is an approximation, though in general a good approximation.

Most pendulum's are built with a heavy weight on the end of a light chain or rod. The greater the mass ratio between end weight and chain the better the approximation works.

For oddly shaped pendulums or for very precise calculations one must look at the moment of inertia of the entire pendulum, and not the simplified version used in most cases.

Walt

Ummm, does that mean I was right?

[Walter Wayne]

AC

Hmmm, rereading my post I see that I wasn't speaking english to the best of my ability that day. But no it doesn't. The power source, once started, is gravity. How it got it's initial motion going isn't important.

[asthmatic camel]

Originally posted by Walter Wayne
AC

Hmmm, rereading my post I see that I wasn't speaking english to the best of my ability that day. But no it doesn't. The power source, once started, is gravity. How it got it's initial motion going isn't important.

I was more thinking of the idea that the rate at which the pendulum swings can be affected by adding or subtracting mass. Without energy being put into the system, the pendulum would eventually stop. It would seem logical that as the energy supplied is (virtually) constant, then adding mass would make a difference to the way the pendulum swings. In the same way that an empty truck accelerates more quickly than a full one.

The people who maintain the clock seem to think so, as I distinctly recall from a childhood visit seeing piles of pennies on top of the weight.

[Ian Osborne]

I'm speaking from ignorance here, but with extra weight, wouldn't the increased acceleration on the way down be cancelled out by an increased deceleration on the way up?

[asthmatic camel]

Originally posted by Ian Osborne
I'm speaking from ignorance here, but with extra weight, wouldn't the increased acceleration on the way down be cancelled out by an increased deceleration on the way up?

Thinking about it, adding or removing piles of coins effectively lowers or heightens the length of the pendulum. Is this what Walter Wayne meant?