Steve Allen wrote: > > Further evidence that having civil clocks tracking atomic time (or > solar time) may be deemed less relevant than other factors. > What good to go through the havoc of redefining UTC when governments > and agencies will do things like this? > > http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/02/28/offbeat.venezuela.time.reut/index.html
I find two sentences in this report really bizarre: > To prevent blackouts, the country slightly lowered the frequency of > the current. Why would a small change in frequency have much effect on the power used? Surely reducing the voltage would have an effect but not reducing the frequency (except maybe marginally). > For common quartz clocks, the slight drop in frequency slows the > vibration of the crystal that regulates time keeping, he said, > adding, "People must be going nuts." Umm, why should the supply frequency affect a crystal oscillator? I think they mean non-quartz clocks.
