A watch that I've had for over a year now, one day ceased to function. Like any normal human being, you tap on the cover a few times with your finger, and if that doesn't work, we tend to take it off and bang it against a harder surface in hopes that it will start ticking again. Well, when that doesn't work we deduce that it must be the battery, so we get a new one.
Fine, now the watch starts working again, and life for us is all back to normal, birds start singing, the sun shines, flowers bloom, while an orchestra plays in the background, you know, you get that whole Disneyland kinda feeling going on.
At any rate, not long after I started my infinite journey down the road up ahead of me, into the backdrop of an oversized Sun, my watch stopped working again. I just couldn't believe it, a brand new battery and the watch stopped ticking. So, I once again, went through the routine taps and bangs, still nothing.
However, once the watch is off my hand, it works again???
Why is that?
2007-03-31 20:22:05 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
I REALLY need a scientific answer as to why the watch works when it's is NOT on my risk, but then, works when I lay it down somewhere. It's a serious question, although I added humor to my story.
2007-03-31 20:40:29 · update #1
The answer lies not with the battery, but with the battery contacts. The only difference between being on and off your wrist is the temperature of the watch. When it is warm, the metal of the battery contacts expand, probably at a different rate to the battery, due to, say, copper content. This means they may not be making contact with the battery. When you take it off, the metal contracts, and contact is again made with the battery, and it works again. Or it may be some other electrical connection within the watch, but the principle is the same.
You can test this by warming the watch up slightly by some other means, and see if it stops working.
2007-04-01 00:47:48 · answer #1 · answered by Labsci 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Machines do not have a mind of their own or a personality, and they are not ornery and hard to get along with. Sounds true, but anyone who deals with complex technology knows that this rule is false.
You abuse of the watch (not just the banging it, but the daily wear and tear on it) could have caused harm, but if it is a solid-state watch, and most digital watches are, then that shouldn’t be true. Tell that to my computer motherboard that assassinated my 3.5” drive after only a few uses; a drive that had survived 2 previous motherboards. The computer got used to a certain stress and heat level and when that changed the old parts that were used to that previous stress level started to die.
I can’t explain why it happened, clearly there was a fault on the transistor level somewhere, but finding it would be more expensive then just replacing the faulty part. The same could have happened with your watch.
Then there are the fixed life spans given to equipment now days. Things we buy are typically last for a month or two past the warrantee period and then for some silly reason they die. My scanner gave up the ghost because a metal plate with a tension spring on it was held in place with plastic pins. I had to drill holes in the scanner box and in the plates to anchor them down and that was a very tight thing to do. The scanner was not designed to last more that a few years. Even sitting the shelf it was growing old and that spring had constant tension that the plastic pins couldn’t hold back forever. It was designed to fail; planned obsolesce the call it.
I don’t know if your watch was planned to die at some point, if you damaged it somehow, or if it just decided to quit on you. We will never know. The fact that it only works when you aren’t wearing in could be due to a transit short, a faulty connection or the simple fact that the darn watch doesn’t want to work for you any more. I am more inclined to believe it is the first two, but I won’t ignore the last. Some technology just fails for no known reason. I have heard of cars that rattle and wheeze right up to the point when you take them into the shop and then they run smoothly. Then five miles down the road they start acting up again. It isn’t a miracle, but it is as understandable as one. There may be a good scientific reason for it, but sometimes we can't find one.
2007-04-01 03:41:07 · answer #2 · answered by Dan S 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All the answers so far assumed that the watch is faulty and is totally gone, but what you wrote indicates differently. You wrote that it stops when you wear it on the wrist but works when you take it and put it on the table. I am presuming that the table is cooler than your body. So, something is getting heated and making it stop working. To prove this, put it between your palms instead of wearing on the wrist or put it on a surface which is a little warm, not hot. It should stop working there too.
2007-04-01 04:22:16 · answer #3 · answered by Swamy 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I could go into a deep scientific explanation about the science of time keeping and what your doing wrong but it would take up far too much time and space to write all of that on here so I would recommend to just get a new watch instead of a battery this time.
2007-04-01 03:28:20 · answer #4 · answered by just joe 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The watch could be faulty. Buy a new one or if you really love that watch, take it to the shop.
2007-04-01 03:26:18 · answer #5 · answered by jai 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
hate to state the obvious, but I think your watch is broken. Probably from hitting it all the time.
2007-04-01 03:32:25 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
It,s probably been banged around too much!
2007-04-01 03:32:11 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋