Fastest Clock in the World tells time to the microsecond

Art school student Freddie Yauner's CO2-powered Highest Popping Toaster in the World concept is great and all (it's even supposedly Guinness World Record-certified), but a clock that aims to tell time to one millionth of a second is what it takes to turn our geeky, schedule-obsessed hearts to mush. Since no display can refresh a million times a second (and no eye can comprehend that kind of data), Yauner's concept lets you peer into the moment by hitting pause. Just note that by the time you let go the clock will have already advanced by another several million microseconds, prompting an almost Heisenbergian cycle of observation in its owner. Videos of the toaster and clock after the break.

[Via Coolest Gadgets]

[joe @ Jun 27th 2008 1:54AM]

Great! Now I won't destroy the suffle.

[MrFairladyz @ Jun 27th 2008 1:55AM]

OEMGEEE it toasts!!!! but does it blend!!!!!1!!!????

[andres @ Jun 27th 2008 2:08AM]

what if i blend you, put you in a bathtub, and drop the toaster in with you?

[Nytrojen @ Jun 27th 2008 2:14AM]

I'll blend your face in a minute...

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 3:02AM]

"OEMGEEE" is grounds enough for face-puree

[MrFairladyz @ Jun 27th 2008 6:03PM]

lol nice :) the blendtec blender could do it easy :D

[Darkroom @ Jun 27th 2008 1:56AM]

so it's an illusion? the clock will just look like it's moving, but will just place random digits when the user presses pause?

[imacmatt09 @ Jun 27th 2008 2:04AM]

No its real. It just displays the digits after its paused. It cant update that fast enough to do it while its running.

[Mic2000 @ Jun 27th 2008 8:34AM]

Agree, but do you have the prove, maybe they just fake it ;)

[Jeff @ Jun 27th 2008 12:06PM]

that's exactly what i was thinking... the last 4 digits are just randomized. :)

at the very least, i'd wonder if it's even remotely accurate, and even if it is, why would it matter?

:)

neat all the same i guess.

[Ghen @ Jun 27th 2008 4:43PM]

last 2 digits are always 99 just to screw with everyone that tries to stop on a perfect 1 second.

[AJ @ Jun 28th 2008 4:57PM]

@ Jeff: You might right to some extent. Quantum fluctuations do actually start affecting our "measurements" of reality, if you will, somewhat at this scale. However the effects of it don't quite become apparent till we hit the Planck scale (Which is extremely small: 5.39 * 10-44 seconds). This concept is not directly related to what might be happening up there, but it is in a way. As the editor pointed out an effect similar to that of Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty might start acting up at this scale, but not necessarily. The digits might seem to be randomized but they may not be. The probability of a somewhat similar number coming up twice is quite small but not 0. Only scientific analysis can prove if this clock can really tell time to a micro second which, if you don't know, is quite small.

@Ghen: LOL. That might be so or it might just be a coincidence. He did after all just pause the clock twice.

[ryan @ Jun 27th 2008 1:57AM]

dumb.

[Dan @ Jun 27th 2008 2:41AM]

No I'm aren't.

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 2:47AM]

i r soo smaart

[Tony @ Jun 27th 2008 3:08AM]

Is our children learning?

[gjp303 @ Jun 28th 2008 1:09AM]

"are" our children learning. ...apparently not...

[Andre @ Jun 27th 2008 2:10AM]

I'd buy it. The clock, that is... I don't really get the toaster.

[Steven @ Jun 27th 2008 2:20AM]

I wish I could get the toasts...

[LuvMuffin @ Jun 27th 2008 2:11AM]

the toaster is cooler than the clock just think of all the people u could trick/scare with the toaster

[Ryan Trevisol @ Jun 27th 2008 1:31PM]

I know, it'd be a real hit at all the wild toast parties I have.

[Steven @ Jun 27th 2008 2:17AM]

Impossible to read properly; should have made it an analog clock. Just four hands: minutes, seconds, milliseconds, microseconds. (Who needs hours when you have microseconds?)

"A millisecond in a van is spooky" -- Racter

[Matt @ Jun 27th 2008 2:25AM]

How fast does it actually update when it's not paused? Up to the hundredths of a second? The rest look like they stay at 8, but of course it's a video.
Wikipedia says the average exposure time for a frame is around 1/50th of a second, so the milliseconds would be displayed about twice. The milliseconds counter does look a bit dimmer in motion, would it do this if it were moving? I don't know much about photography, but would this indicate it's changing as some of the LEDs would be turned off on each number?

[SuperQ @ Jun 27th 2008 2:48AM]

A good digital SLR (like my D70) can capture 1/8000 if the lighting is good enough. That's good enough to capture 5 digits of the sub-second reasonably well.

[Piers Rippey @ Jun 27th 2008 4:54AM]

The problem isn't the speed of the camera, it's the speed of the clock's display. It simply can't change it's digits that fast.

[Evan @ Jun 27th 2008 8:52AM]

Engadget: "Since no display can refresh a million times a second"

Not true, some LEDs are capable of transmitting signals over 20MHz, or 20 million updates a second. Even basic LEDs (like those used in household remote controls) can be updated 50 thousand times a second.

Matt:

The milliseconds digit looks dimmer even when the time is paused. It could be a variation in the power supplied to each digit. Off the shelf resistors and capacitors have variations of several percent.

[giuliop @ Jun 27th 2008 10:00AM]

They look like they're staying at 8 because in any (small) given time all the segments are on.

[T-Bone @ Jun 27th 2008 11:58AM]

@Evan:
There is a big difference between "LED" and "display". With an LED, you only get 0 or 1, with a display you get 0-9. Is that clear enough for you?

[Ben Moreno @ Jun 27th 2008 2:28AM]

This clock is similar to the Atomic clock that Einstein used to prove his theory of relativity.

They took the clock, syncronized it to another one, and put it on a fast jet that can fly around the world.

After the plane flew around the world they checked the clocks, and they were off by a fraction of a second.

[happy_penguin @ Jun 27th 2008 2:53AM]

The only thing your post has proven is that you're a spammer. :)

[happy_penguin @ Jun 27th 2008 2:55AM]

Hey! The spammy link is gone! :)

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 2:58AM]

yeah yeah yeah science and stuff but 24 JACK BAUER FTW!!!1

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 3:04AM]

uh...happy? lay off the absinthe, dude

[A.C.E.R. @ Jun 27th 2008 3:42AM]

You do know absinthe is just expensive alcohol, right?

[Steven @ Jun 27th 2008 4:23AM]

Morono.
Einstein didn't do this experiment. Didn't have a sufficiently accurate portable atomic clock. Even today a transatlantic flight on a 747 shows a difference of only a few tens of nanoseconds.

[allislost @ Jun 27th 2008 2:41AM]

Now you can pin-point the exact moment your girlfriend fakes her orgasm.

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 2:59AM]

nice... self deprecating humor from "allislost"

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 2:56AM]

what ever happened to Anonymoose? he was such a whacked-out goofball.

/offtopic

[andres @ Jun 27th 2008 6:03AM]

he went back to /b/

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 12:24PM]

zuh?

[Steven @ Jun 28th 2008 7:16AM]

"zuh?"

Yes, but only slightly.

[A.C.E.R. @ Jun 27th 2008 3:03AM]

Biggest stopwatch ever.

[StopTheInsanity @ Jun 27th 2008 4:09AM]

No kidding. All I can think about is the amount of hours I'd waste continuously hitting that pause button to try and get the seconds and all the following numbers to all read 0...

[Skyride @ Jun 27th 2008 3:24AM]

Lol. Nice.

Its not similar at all to einsteins clock because an atomic clock calculates time by using the half life of a nuclear atoms. This one dosent. :)

An atomic clock is bassically a guiger counter hooked up to a hyper precise counter and a computer.

[Steven @ Jun 27th 2008 4:55AM]

You really don't have a clue, have you?

[Skorpius @ Jun 27th 2008 3:33AM]

I want femtoseconds (quadrillionth).

[A.C.E.R. @ Jun 27th 2008 3:40AM]

I want machoseconds (bazillionth).

[phanbouy @ Jun 27th 2008 3:41AM]

i want nachoseconds (que salsa!)

[A.C.E.R. @ Jun 27th 2008 3:44AM]

I just want seconds (more udon please).

[LordFarkward @ Jun 27th 2008 4:20AM]

I want no sloppy seconds (Britney).