Reply With QuoteTwice as good as a 24hr watchOriginally Posted by Kippax
That is pretty cool though. I think it's happened once for me, but not with the seconds hand also there.
Just looked at my watch box and noticed my Everest has stopped bang on twelve.
What are the chances?
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Twice as good as a 24hr watch
That is pretty cool though. I think it's happened once for me, but not with the seconds hand also there.
1 in 43,200 (i think)
Funny enough, our apprentice came in this week with no watch on, he usually wears a black resin quartz watch. When i asked him where his watch was he said it had stopped. I said time for a new battery then and he said no, he wanted to leave it as it was as it had stopped at exactly midnight / midday just like yours
Last edited by boundary546; 10th May 2019 at 21:30.
If it's truly bang on, then it could be even less likely given the number of places the seconds hand could be other than bang on the marker as it's an auto.
Let's discount the chance event which is not in the least supernatural and congratulate you on a chuffing marvellous collection.
David
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
I read this on Tapatalk and thought that’s the worst SC post I’ve ever seen!
1 in 345,600
You are spending too much time on watch forums that's what it's saying
If anyone is going to try to do the maths, then this needs to be a whole lot more pedantic. While the hands are close enough for casual observation, the second hand is actually out by a beat, or one sixth of a second and the minute hand is out by about the same, ten seconds. Logically, the hour hand will be out too, but that’s too small a graduation to discriminate.
To do the maths, you’d have to work backwards from a second hand beating six times a second, that is, six times per graduation. That’s 360. However, as it missed by one beat we are dealing with a range of one beat either side of top dead centre, making the odds of the second hand being in apparently the right place 3 in 360 or 1 in 120.
The minute hand is more complicated as it is geared down from the second hand, giving it 21,600 discrete possible positions. However, the minute hand can only be out by graduations of 60 seconds, or 360 beats. Thus, if the second hand is correct, the minute hand will either be spot on or out by a full minute, breaking the illusion. This massively reduces the possible permutations and demonstrates nicely why stats are hard and metaphysics harder still.
The minute hand actually looks to be out by about the same as the second hand, but it can’t be, because it can only be out by graduations of a minute at a time if the illusion is to remain. So the minute hand is very very slightly misfitted. Well within any sane tolerance for normal use, but if one is going to apply a formal procedure, details like this have to attended to or GIGO. So the odds here are one in sixty.
The hour hand looks spot on, but working back from the gearing, we know it can’t be. We simply can’t discriminate its deviation. So the question is, how far out does it have to be to break the illusion? The hour hand has a huge range of possible permutations, but freed of the constraint the minute hand had, they collapse back to 1 in 120. So that’s my take on the correct method, giving (1/120)x(1/60)x(1/60)
Or to put it another way, calculating probability of events within an interconnected formal system is a pain. Calculating the possibility of discriminated events in such a system is near impossible, but hey...
And I’m awake with time to kill, because I have an ill and fitfully sleeping eight year old and it’s my turn to look after them.
Last edited by M4tt; 11th May 2019 at 02:17.
If anyone is going to try to do the maths, it is usually a good idea to start off with accurate data. The movement in the Everest is a Miyota 9015 which beats at eight times per second, not six.
If the movement has a date... as it is running down it will stop when it engages to change the date and it hasn't enough torque. Wind it up and let it run down again to see where it will stop.... if it doesn't have a date hidden in there then try an exorcism.
Unless there's a good reason why a movement can't stop mid-beat, the chances of a perfect line up are more remote.
If one considers that lining the hands up exactly, at a molecular level, is almost impossible (unless you use an electron microscope to check the alignment), then the chances become infinitely small.
Aliens, could be!
Infinite improbability makes little sense outside of The Heart of Gold so it does look like Zaphod up to mischief again.
Absolutely! In my defence, it was two O'clock in the morning, and I was wearing this:
Which does. However, my point was about the method not the result and this beautifully demonstrates the importance of explicitly giving the method. If I'd just given a number then working out where I'd screwed up would have been near impossible. In short, I'm pretty sure that the method described was sound even if it wasn't valid. Plug in the new numbers and you are good to go. I assume that you of all people would appreciate the value of getting the right formal procedure.
This^^, and I might add parallax....You are spending too much time on watch forums that's what it's saying
and this old thing. I do like that Eddie interpretation.
Last edited by size11s; 11th May 2019 at 10:37.
For a watch to stop at bang on 12, with the seconds hand on 12 too, is a huge coincidence, and I’m never happy with accepting coincidence as an explanation for anything. Yes, it can happen, but usually there’s another reason to explain an observation.
I’ve come across watches where the seconds hand will always stop at the same position, that’s due to a slight fault with the seconds wheel causing increased friction at one point. When the mainspring is almost fully unwound it won’t impart quite enough torque to overcome this increased resistance so the watch will stop. I wouldn’t describe this as a fault, it’s a characteristic of the watch.
Sometimes the hands of a watch will touch each other as they overlap. If the friction is significant the watch will stop, particularly if its the seconds hand making contact. This can be caused by wear (old watches), errors in fitting, or lune protruding from the underside of the hand. This can be a real problem when refitting hands, getting them to avoid contact at all points of the dial can be a challenge.
So how does this explain why the hands have stopped at 12? Here’s my hypothesis, which may or may not be correct: The hr hand is barely clearing the dial, and just makes contact with the lume at 12. Possibly the lume at that point is a tad high. This raises the hand very slightly, thus causing contact with the minute hand, which in turn is raised slightly and contacts the seconds hand. If the mainspring is providing sufficient torque the watch will continue to run, but if it’s almost fully run down the friction will be sufficient to stop the watch in this position.
If this is really happening I’d be surprised, but it’s a plausible scanario that seems more likely than coincidence to me. If this effect is reproducible it’s definitely not coincidence or chance, but how can you test it? If the mainspring’s got plenty of wind in it when the hands reach 12 the watch will keep running, for it to stop in that position again requires it to be almost fully unwound .
If my theory’s correct, moving the hands past 12 will allow it to keep running for a while longer, but handling the watch will cause the rotor to move slightly and impart some wind into the spring.
Unless it keeps happening, or the power reserve apears low, I wouldn’t worry about it!
Agreed - I suspect a physical cause rather than "beating the odds"
You've got to love the Dennison Meteor case. I think this particular dial came in at least four combination: Meteor, Aquatite and then as a stainless and a chrome plated snap back number like this:This^^, and I might add parallax....
and this old thing. I do like that Eddie interpretation.
Everything has a physical cause unless there is an appeal to dualism going on. How do you go about calculating the odds of 'goldilocks' lume and hand fitting, or any other impediment?
That a hair, damage or whatever can stop a watch somewhere doesn't automatically make the hands stopping at a precise and significant point any less remarkable, it just shifts the causal explanation. A watch is always going to stop somewhere and, all other things being equal, the odds of it stopping at any particular point are just as unlikely as one we deem significant.
Once again there will be a fact of the matter about lume height, the range of hands binding to the range of possible hand positions. The digital nature of any system with a resonator makes the probabilities easier to calculate, while one relying on friction or impediment looks like a bugger to calculate.
I agree with the earlier claim that the possibility of a hidden date set up to flick over at midnight, would be a useful explanation and reduces the odds of it being just so by a great deal. That's because it is actually designed to add an extra torque burden at precisely that point and, if set up near perfectly by the chap who fitted the hands, would cut the odds dramatically. That should be fairly reproducible.
However, it's a big world and it's easy to forget that, over the last year, say, there will have been rather a lot of people looking at a stopped watch. Many of these would notice the significance and post a picture if the position was so significant. Say the odds were a thousand to one, that only takes 250 people who would, if they saw it, post a picture and the odds of seeing such an event posted here are only one in four. Selection bias is a powerful leveller of odds.
As I argued strenuously in the past, it will not be the first time we've seen selection bias in watch forums.
I forgot about the hidden date change mechanism, an embarrassing admission considering I`ve serviced this movement before!
The date change definitely becomes my favoured explanation, friction increases as the date is trying to change so it's no great surprise for the watch to stop at this point. Why don`t we see this more often? Because the mainspring has to be in a very low state of wind as the watch is in the date change phase. The probability of this happening can be estimated. However, getting the seconds hand to coincide is less likely, maybe that was down to probability.
I prefer the date change theory to my previous one, can`t believe I overlooked this point.......out of sight out of mind! The date wheel is present on this watch but unseen, unlike the PRS 82 (ETA 2824) where the date wheel isn`t fitted and therefore the extra friction isn`t incurred. Friction increases as the date wheel starts to move and one tooth contacts the date jumper, a spring which causes the date wheel to 'jump' cleanly and also locates the wheel in one specific position. With an instantaneous (Rolex style) date change there's still a requirement for tension to build up in a spring to cause the change, so the same friction increase applies. In some cases the fall in amplitude can be seen on a timegrapher as the date mechanism comes into play.
That starts to look like a consensus then - it's haunted by the ghost of a date buried under the dial. It was obviously very well set up in the first place. It's good practice with quick change dates to carefully adjust the time until the date snaps before fitting the hands. Obviously whoever set this up did this either automatically or as a point of pride. There's no particular reason that the date and the hands should coincide, it's all in the placement of the hands. It's oddly reassuring that whoever is setting up Eddie's watches is doing so so carefully.
It's unlikely that the watch will always stop exactly there, but it massively increases the chances. That this is a watch forum where any apparently significant thing like this is likely to be posted decreases the odds still further.
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