Re: Marble Clock

[Eryndlia Mavourneen <eryndlia@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, April 2, 2013 2:46:10 PM UTC-5, gattamaneni abhiram wrote:
> On Tuesday, 2 April 2013 08:02:45 UTC-4, John B. Matthews  wrote:
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> > In article <7075541f-01b7-4cd4-997f-b0b8048f067d@googlegroups.com>,
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> >  gattamaneni abhiram <abhiram.gattamaneni@gmail.com> wrote:
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> > > A marble clock is a clock that indicates the current time in a 
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> > > 24-hour day using marbles to represent portions of the hour and 
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> > > day. There are many different kinds of marble clocks, 
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> > > distinguished by variations in the way the marbles represent 
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> > > portions of the day. Our marble clock consists of five shallow 
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> > > "trays" arranged one above the other. The bottom tray (the fifth 
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> > > tray) serves as a marble "reservoir." Every minute, a winding 
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> > > mechanism picks up one marble from the bottom tray, carries it to 
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> > > the top of the clock and drops it into the top tray of the clock. 
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> > > As a tray fills up, marbles fall through to lower level trays, as 
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> > > described below. The current state of the marbles in the upper 
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> > > four trays tells the current time.
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> > For reference, an elapsed-time video of a three-tier version is 
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> > seen here:
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> > <http://www.scientificsonline.com/time-machine-ball-bearing-click.html>
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> > -- 
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> > John B. Matthews
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> > trashgod at gmail dot com
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> > <http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>
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> Do I need to use timer functions in the program to depict the changes in the places of the marbles in different trays?

I believe that would be the simpler way to do it.  Of course, you always can simulate the materials and workmanship of an actual clock with masses, gravitational acceleration, etc.  :-)

Note that the non-realtime timer in Ada is the "delay" statement:  "delay 3.1", for example, will delay for 3.1 seconds.

-- Eryndlia