Grandfather Clocks for Dummies

Clock escapement mechanism

Telling people that we have a favorite type of DotD nominee is pretty much the same as telling people that you have a favorite flavor of Beanboozled Jelly Bellys: how can something so nasty be your "favorite?" So instead we're going to say that ignorant freelancing of the "how does it work" flavor gives us the most joy to expose. Would that be considered schadenfreude? Whatever... that's the type of award we're giving today: it goes to eHow's Jessica Reed, who attempted to explain "How Does a Grandfather Clock Work?"¹ to the masses via HomeSteady.com... and she managed to produce an utter failure, let us tell you!

Although they didn't teach Reed this factoid while she was getting her web designing certification, we happen to know that most mechanical clocks (like a Grandfather clock) work on a system of gears known as an "escapement," which converts the energy of an external system – a spring or pendulum – into regular motion. The main gear moves one tooth per second; sixty movements of that gear moves the minute hand once, and sixty movements of the minute hand moves the hour hand once. Heck, our staff geologist knows of a guy who geared a clock to count off geological epochs! It's not that difficult...

...unless you're ignorant of physics and simple machines, like Jessica. Reed spends her entire article (294 words) explaining how to wind a grandfather clock and keep it accurate. Nowhere in her article does the word "gear" appear! The best she can come up with is, "The clocks work on the laws of gravity. A large pendulum hangs in the center of the clock. A system of weights are attached to the clock, and the pendulum moves them as it swings. Gravity causes the pendulum to continuously swing back and forth, moving the weights at the proper times to keep the hands on the clock accurate."

Oh, Jessica, wherefore art though such a dumbass? "Gravity... [moves] the weights at the proper times"? Are you daft? The question is "how does it work": claiming that the weights move "at the proper times" to keep the clock's hands accurate is, quite frankly, moronic! Did you even look at the Wikipedia article on pendulum clocks???
But no, Reed, abetted by an equally scientifically illiterate content editor, most likely with a journalism or English lit degree, managed to get paid for this crap. And Leaf Group (the new name of Demand Media Studios) leaves it out there as one of their multitudinous contributions to the stupidification of the internet. Here's to Leaf Group, content editors, and to Jessica Reed: our Dumbass of the Day!

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how-does_4743980_grandfather-clock-work.html

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