Don't Panic Geocast

Time is a very complex subject that you can devote your entire life to. Today we’ll cover a few of the basics and enough to get your interest up! We’ll see that it’s difficult to know what a second is and how long relative times are, but absolute time is even messier! We also discuss dried coffee and tetris! Importance of Time (and why it’s on a geology show) It synchronizes the world and our human interactions (need minutes - hours accuracy generally) It allows us to talk about events in a common coordinate system Allows synchronization of scientific measurements and comparison of data sources. This is really important for seismometers for EQ location! Let’s us use GPS! 1 billionth of a second (nano second) error in 1 GPS satellite, GPS receiver is +/- 1 ft to satellite, which is 2–3 feet on Earth. Early Timekeeping Burning candles in marked cases Hourglass Water powered clocks Pendulum clocks Galileo and Huygens (fancy temperature compensation as well) Video on Galileo Modern Time Keeping (Atomic Clock