Comments on: Water Powered Clock

By: David

David — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:33:12 +0000

Hey there, just wanted to say thanks for this entry. Knew the water powered clocks were fishy but can’t find much about them on google other than places selling them.

Plain ol potential difference of two metals joined by a conducting fluid.

By: M0reteavicar

M0reteavicar — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:44:37 +0000

I smelled a rat the moment I saw one of these water clocks (which would be half an hour ago)… I saw they use a “special” water battery, although I couldn’t find anywhere to allay my suspicions until I found this nice little blog - nice one.

I remember as a kid an old 1950’s kid’s physics book - at a time when they knew how to write physics texts for children without dumbing down to the level of a single-celled ameba, one of the first things it gives you as a task is to build your own battery out of coins - possibly with threepence and halfpennie coins in an alternating stack, and water - the importance being the former was zinc rich and the latter copper rich. Sadly I didn’t have old coins, and could never find out what coins had good ratios, since most modern coins have the copper content reduced. Anyway… the principle is as old as time, as you rightly say, water is only the conducting medium, and not the source of power…

The method has been employed in self-galvonising steel-hulled ships practically since their begining, protecting by use of zinc blocks attached to the hull, which through the electrovaic potential set up in the sea water attracts anodic zinc to cathodic steel, and thus plates zinc over any exposed steel to inhibit corrosion.

By: Brandon Lu

Brandon Lu — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 09:43:01 +0000

thank you very very much I was almost going to get it

By: rashea

rashea — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:25:44 +0000

I bought a water clock in December. It ran perfectly until last month. I am quite disappointed that I only got a half year from it. Do you think that’s “normal”?

By: John Hopkins

John Hopkins — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:55:49 +0000

I agree fully to the things you said. The cold heat tool was looking very very suspicious to me from the beginning. A thing that creates heat by producing a shortcut in the materials to solder is so unreliable, you can hardly solder wires properly. The heat can’t be adjusted or kept at least constant so the flux will vaporize quickly leaving you with poor solder joints. The water powered clock is the same thing. Water is a molecule that is extremly stable because it produces a lot of energy when it is created (just remember the “Hindenburg”), so it will take energy to alter it back again. Where should the energy come from? If this was so easy people will just build everything to be powered by water. How stupid! “Extracts electrons” is so plain bullshit. It will only extract the electrons from the zink that is dissolving and put them back into the solution at the other electrode. If the water is really just a short circuit and not even the zink story is fact it’s just worse…

John

By: Adam Monsen

Adam Monsen — Wed, 03 May 2006 08:15:38 +0000

I fully agree, and I wish Thinkgeek would add this key fact in understanding how the clock /really/ works to the description.

By: andrew

andrew — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:38:58 +0000

you have (unknowingly?) reviewed two very similar products here: the solder is to the two-tip iron as the water is to the clock. the water simply closes the circuit (as does the solder). it is not true that the clock extracts electrons from the water, but you decide if this diminishes its niftiness.

By: tommo

tommo — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 03:29:02 +0000

Thanks for the heads up.. I almost bought one.