Timeline for I'm stranded on an alien planet. How do I measure an earth year without a clock?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
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| Sep 28, 2015 at 18:40 | comment | added | Matthew Najmon | The main assumption I was referring to you making with regard to the general population, was to assume that our stranded hero (who, the OP makes fairly clear, is pulled from that general population, and not assumed to be you) will have good enough rhythm to reproduce a beat from memory to a tempo of plus or minus about 8%. Your claim that "you can probably hit 120 beats per minute to within +/- 10" assumes such an accuracy, which is an unreasonably optimistic assumption. | |
| Sep 28, 2015 at 10:44 | comment | added | Andrew Wagner | I used to be in a marching band, and I get around 114 bpm. So I guess I even do ~that slower that I did in my 20's... | |
| Sep 27, 2015 at 10:48 | comment | added | Peter Majeed | +1 Wow, this totally worked. I tried tapping this out on a metronome and found I could consistently get 118/119 bpm. (Disclosure: I've rehearsed/performed this song many times.) | |
| Sep 27, 2015 at 0:30 | comment | added | user2781 | This answer amuses me, since I already use Stars and Stripes forever to measure short time intervals. | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 3:50 | comment | added | Profane tmesis | Why does the pendulum have to be swinging while you gather parts for the sundial? So long as you're counting the days, it doesn't really matter if you only figure out the length of a day after 300 of them. | |
| Sep 23, 2015 at 2:37 | comment | added | MichaelS | While this is another creative approach to the problem, it still isn't particularly accurate. I highly doubt any but a tiny minority of people know the BPM of any particular musical piece, and most people aren't going to maintain very good timing while multitasking to build a pendulum (which adds more inaccuracy because of the method). And of course all the same problems stemming from an alien world compound the errors. You still need to be within running distance of the gate for a span of a couple months to be remotely sure you'll get there. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 14:49 | comment | added | corsiKa | And they called me a nerd for having Sousa on my iPod! Jokes on them! Next time they're stranded on an alien world, you think Snoop Lion is gonna help them? | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 13:37 | comment | added | njzk2 | @Michael yes, that would work if you can measure what a second is. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 13:36 | comment | added | njzk2 | @nitsua60 but in an elevator, once the cruise speed is reached, the acceleration downward you feel (as a combination of gravity and elevator acceleration) does not change anymore | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 11:59 | comment | added | nitsua60 | @MatthewNajmon I don't know where I'm assuming I'm anything like the general population. I get the +/- 10 bpm figure for "general population" from my experience teaching music in primary schools. True, I don't know what the stresses of being stranded in an alien environment would be like; I don't believe any of the answerers do, though. What are the other problems--I'd like to improve if possible, identify known difficulties if not. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 11:55 | history | edited | nitsua60 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 23 characters in body
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| Sep 22, 2015 at 11:12 | comment | added | komodosp | "That's an error of one part in twenty" or 18-19 days in a year... | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 9:10 | comment | added | Michael | How about determining gravity using free fall? Drop a dense object from a known height and count how long it falls. For height you could use your body (e.g. I know that I’m 180cm±1cm tall) to build a ruler. The main inaccuracy still comes from counting seconds though. And I can’t think of a better method without a known gravity. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 8:41 | comment | added | Matthew Najmon | This still has a lot of problems. For a start, you drastically overestimate how much like you the general population are. Not everyone has such good rythm. I'd be doing good, even here on earth with ideal circs, to hit 120bpm +-20. While watching a pendulum that's not already right at 120, it'll be even worse, as my brain will subconsciously try to cheat off the pendulum. That's on earth. In this scenario, add in that unfamiliar atmosphere and gravity intensity, and the stress of getting tossed through a stargate with no gear, and your perception of time is likely distorted... and on and on. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 7:48 | history | edited | JDługosz | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
"Its" is the posesive pronoun; "it's" is *always* and *only* "it is".
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| Sep 22, 2015 at 5:29 | comment | added | njzk2 | I'd use youtube.com/watch?v=uu9W4ln_Pyo that's ~100 bpm | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 5:21 | comment | added | njzk2 | Actually gravity does vary in an elevator, since your distance to the center of mass changes. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 3:09 | history | edited | nitsua60 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
reference gravity-problem, include limitations
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| Sep 22, 2015 at 2:46 | history | edited | nitsua60 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
reference gravity-problem
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| Sep 22, 2015 at 1:08 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 22, 2015 at 1:10 | |||||
| Sep 22, 2015 at 1:07 | history | answered | nitsua60 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |