Welcome to what I hope will be a
weekly blog post which I have entitled “Random Post Friday.” I know that it is
not the most creative title ever but I figured that was better than “Jim’s
Random thoughts” or “Jim shares his mind.” Anyways, my hope is that I can post
this every Friday for my two years here in Honduras and it will simply just be
random thoughts that I have. Most likely the thoughts will have nothing to do
with my work here in Honduras and may not make much sense. I hope that it can
be a little bit of a treat for everyone every Friday because I know that there
is nothing else you guys would rather look forward to than a blog post from me.
So consider it my present to you guys, my loyal readers and hopefully you guys
enjoy it. Possibly, my random thoughts can strike up conversations and lead to
follow up posts, guest blogs, or even a Bill Simmons type mailbag (I think that
is stretching it though as I have tried it once and got exactly zero questions).
Anyways, let’s begin!
My first random thought that I would
like to share is concerning clocks, it is something that I have always been
curious about and have never been able to come up with a good enough answer to
please me curiosity. The question is simple, how do clocks (computers, cell
phones, watches) keep the time even when they are shut off? Now watches and
cell phones I have come up with answers to, with a watch it always has a
battery and so even if it goes into a power save mode or something similar it
is still keeping the time. Cell phones as well work because they can always
dial up to the network and get the correct time so when the cell phone is
turned on it collects the signal from the network and you have the time.
However, what happens when you do not have service and you turn on your phone?
I believe when I was in the states it still always somehow had the right time
and even here I almost always have the right time, even when I do not have
service. How does it do that? But here is the real head scratcher in my mind,
computers. I get that computers are always updating their clocks to have the
correct time by using the internet but what happens when you do not have entertain.
I guess the logical response is that it just runs like a normal clock and
counts the time. Now that is all fine and dandy, but what happens when I have
no internet and I turn off my computer
or the battery dies, when I turn my computer back on (and I still do not have
internet) the computer still has the correct time (and date). How in the world
does it do that? The only possible explanation that I can think of is that the
computer has some sort of internal clock that continues working even when the
computer is turned off so that whenever it is turned on it knows the correct
time. Now this means that the computer nerds have figured out either A. how to
run a clock not using any energy or B. how to connect to the internet and
update a clock even when there is no internet connection. That is as far as my
logic leads me and if that is true that I think both of those are amazing
technologies and they should be expanded, think about it free internet
worldwide or free energy worldwide.
Now I am sure that somewhere in that
paragraph above I used some sort of faulty logic, whether it was slippery slope
theory or something else (Sorry Mrs. Bond (10th grade math teacher)
I forgot the other types of faulty logic…). However it seems fairly sound to me
at this point in my life. I would love to hear from anyone who can provide me
with more insight into this conundrum and possibly even share their own ideas;
maybe someone can even provide me with the right answer to this question.
Please leave any feedback that you would like and in the comments section and I
hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of “Random Post Friday” and make sure
to turn in next Friday for the second edition!
New pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150402897067359.414180.593887358&type=1&l=3aad4e7395
Himmer-
ReplyDeleteAfter some googling, it seems that cell phones as well as computers have a very small separate battery that works to keep track of the time. When the cell phone and computer are charged, this small battery will draw from the main battery and thus will rarely run out of battery power itself. It also seems that the small clock running batteries do not use much energy at all (makes sense). Think of the battery in a watch, it takes them a long time to die. The clock battery in computers and cell phones is probably similar to these watch batteries, except the computer and cell phone time batteries are constantly recharged by their main batteries, so they (likely) never run out.
Love you,
Joe
Jim,
ReplyDeleteLOVE your "Random Post Friday" idea. I will certainly look forward to reading them all. I know lots of other blogs I read do things like "Friday Favorites", where they share their favorite things from the week (whether that is a though, quote, picture, video, etc.), so there's an idea for you too! Lets video chat again soon please! So glad to hear everything is going well.
Missing you,
Monica