The Drinking Bird Clock

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the third Action Project of the STEAM class Light, Sound, and Time. This unit, Time, has been all about how we perceive time and what it actually is. We first questioned when time originated and why we believe time began directly after the Big Bang. Then, we looked at older methods of telling time such as using the position of the sun for a sundial. We also looked at longitude and latitude and how we determine our position because of it. For determining latitude, you can use the North Star if you are in the Northern Hemisphere or a sextant which is a device that uses mirrors to find the angle of the sun to the horizon. For determining longitude, you can use time zones and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). To continue our examination of time-telling devices, we spent time studying pendulums and the Foucault pendulum which is a pendulum that can rotate 360 degrees and show how the Earth will rotate beneath it if it were at the North Pole. For Field Experiences, we talked with astronomer Taylor Hoyt who told us about the expanding universe and his work with finding out why it is expanding. For this Action Project, we have been asked to come up with a design for a time-telling device. These ideas have to be original with some explanation on how they use light or sound to measure time. My device idea is a drinking bird clock. This takes inspiration from the drinking bird toy and uses its constant rate of dipping and rising to tell time. In this post, I have a video that talks about my device including the math and science concepts used in designing it. Under the video, I also have some information that did not make it into the video which explains the history behind my device. I hope you enjoy watching and reading.

The Drinking Bird Clock, GS, 2022

Additional information about my device:
The origin of my drinking bird time telling device comes from the drinking bird toy. The drinking bird was made by Miles V. Sullivan in 1946 but the concept of using heat-driven oscillating liquids for tipping small mechanisms has been around for much longer. Some ancestors of this device are the A. and A. Iske brother’s circular heat engine to rotate a wheel which was made in 1881 and a blown glass rocker that worked on solar power. The 1946 version of the drinking bird has become the toy found in offices and homes that charms the audience with how it works. The expected audience for this device as a method of telling time also falls on that premise. Because of the drinking bird’s interesting design and function, so much attention is drawn to it. By making this a time-telling device, I hope to gather that crowd and demonstrate the marvels of it with the difference being it's not your everyday analog or digital clock.

If the drinking bird does not swing the whole 90 degrees because of the pen, it may swing 45 degrees to where the pen hits the paper. In this case, the arc length of the device would be 1.57 inches. At the end of each day, the paper should look like it has multiple lines on it from a range of lengths. For each minute there is a short mark and it will continue to 30 minutes where it shows a longer mark. The short marks will continue up till the 60th minute where there will be the longest mark, showing an hour has passed. The paper does not have to be replaced each day but eventually, it will run out and need replacing. 

The feedback process:

When I first came up with the idea I was not going to include the water glass the bird dips into. I thought the pen that made a mark would be the beak of the bird but after some conversation with my peers and research on the toy, I realized the water is an essential step of the process for the device to work. I then changed the pen to be attached to the tail of the bird and came up with the platform with the paper underneath it. I also did not know how the markings would be distinguished from each other to tell the time when it was in minutes. I was given the idea of having different-sized marks for the different time milestones. With this information, I came up with a short mark for each minute, a medium-sized mark for 30 minutes, and a long mark for each hour. This could be controlled with the time the pen makes contact with the paper and how heat affects the rate at which it dips and rises back up.

I had a lot of fun working on this Action Project. Coming up with ideas for different time-telling devices was difficult at first but I am glad to have worked with an idea that seemed possible and unique. I have never owned a drinking bird but I thought it would be a cool method of telling time because I had never imagined it as a device that could do that before. There has been some work done by others on making drinking birds work with a digital clock but that requires 4 of them and each is connected electronically to work. As far as the actual clock, more progress needs to be made. My version of the drinking bird clock doesn't have any electronic elements so it is still original. I thought the ideas my peers came up with were very interesting and their creativity is incredible. Thank you for watching my video and reading what did not fit into it. I hope to see you in the next blog.

Sources:
“Dipping Bird Experiments (THERMAL IMAGING).” Sixty Symbols, 6 Dec. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-0-zH4Ip7w. Accessed 7 Mar. 2022.

Rohrig, Brian. “The Amazing Drinking Bird.” ACS, https://highschoolenergy.acs.org/content/hsef/en/what-is-energy/drinking-bird.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2022.

Szczys, Mike. “Dippy Bird Binary Clock.” Hackaday, 11 Sep. 2011, https://hackaday.com/2011/09/11/dippy-bird-binary-clock/. Accessed 8 Mar. 2022.

“The History, Science and Speed Tricks of Drinking Bird Toys.” This and That, http://waynesthisandthat.com/birds.html#:~:text=Miles%20V.,Birdie%20between%201910%20to%201930.. Accessed 8 Mar. 2022