Cardboard Clock | Telugu |
Channel: Arvind Gupta
Date: 2015-01-27

You just heard the tick-tock of this beautiful Cardboard Clock designed by Mr. Ashok Sonalkar. These are various parts – a cardboard frame, wooden pendulum, counter weight, a gear-drum and an escape mechanism. The frame is entirely made from old corrugated boxes. On this frame will be mounted the various parts of the clock. The gear-drum is a key component. There are four notches on the gear and is attached to the drum. They are mounted on an axle. A thread is attached to the gear and then wound on the drum. Place two refills on both ends of the axle as bush bearings. Grandfather clocks had a spring which needing to be wound up. In this case the potential energy will be provided by a falling weight.  Place the gear-drum in the frame. On pulling the thread the gear will rotate. Place a lot of heavy steel nuts in a plastic bag. Tie this bag to the end of the string. This weight will be lifted by winding the string and will provide the energy to the clock. This is the other key mechanism – the Escapement. It is hinged and swivels and has two lugs protruding out. These lugs ensure that the drum rotates at a uniform speed by allowing only one notch of the gear to escape each time. Now we will mount the escape mechanism in the clock frame. Finally we have an improvised pendulum – a heavy wooden piece attached to a flat wooden stick. Apply some adhesive to the end of the stick and fix it through the hole in the frame to the escape mechanism. Now the clock is ready for a trial run. Once you rock the pendulum the clock goes tick-tock, tick-tock. You can see clearly that the escape mechanism allows only one notch in the gear to pass in one oscillation of the pendulum. And this is how every pendulum grandfather clock the world over keeps the time. The clock stops once the weight reaches the ground. Now watch the escape mechanism from the top. As the weight rotates the drum the swilling stoppers on the escape mechanism allow only one notch on the gear to rotate on each swing of the pendulum. In this last clip you can see an energetic Mr. Ashok Sonalkar the designer of the Cardboard Clock demonstrating it to a bunch of young people. This work was supported by IUCAA and Tata Trust. This film was made by Ashok Rupner TATA Trust: Education is one of the key focus areas for Tata Trusts, aiming towards enabling access of quality education to the underprivileged population in India. To facilitate quality in teaching and learning of Science education through workshops, capacity building and resource creation, Tata Trusts have been supporting Muktangan Vigyan Shodhika (MVS), IUCAA's Children’s Science Centre, since inception. To know more about other initiatives of Tata Trusts, please visit www.tatatrusts.org