Expiry: 2011-02-17 12:00 (UTC+8)
No batteries, no chemicals, no electricity – so no pollution
Just fill the tank with tap water and your up and running
Lasts for 5-7 weeks of accurate timekeeping before refreshing
No lose time while changing water owning to the built-in memory chip
would it work with rain water or urine?
i never thought of rain water.
urine would be good for those on the go!
in any case, any claim of no pollution is bollocks (manufacturing & disposal)
Yes, apparently there is some salt inside and a pair of elctrodes which gradually wear out in generating the current. Like the lemon cells in your high-school science experiment.
So, in other words there are chemicals that wear out, and there is electricity (this thing does not run on good wishes and unicorn droppings). It's not water powered as such, rather that the water is one of the reactants.
According to Wikipedia the zinc electrode wears out in a few months.
So true. You beat me to it (so did greenmarsupial).
Even rainwater has a (probably insignificant) effect on the ecosystem of wherever it is trapped. Whether it is trapped to water non-native vegetation or wash poo into a septic system.
In the situation where this would be useful I can see a lot of chemicals, pollution, batteries(I suspect there would be batteries involved with things such as the water companies servers running UPSs, cmos retention, cars run by the water company, pumps with backup batteries) (normally you would expect someone on tank water to be water conscious, or at least have a better attitude than the average yuppie).
That is just the water used to run it. The environmental impact on resource processing, manufacturing, shipping (possibly 2 lots of shipping), packaging and eventual disposal.
these comments are so stupid. dont buy the product. youre probably the same person who comments on television deals because they dont have the best electro-magnetic-firewire-disco-connection. keep this mumbo-jumbo to yourself
Well I think the OP is inviting comments like this by making outlandish claims such as "No batteries, no chemicals, no electricity – so no pollution". If the description did not mention this at all, and codhopper just came in spurting out random facts it would be bizarre. But the OP is provking these types of responses which I think are pretty valid (and interesting).
I thought this was a shower timer. As an alarm clock it might be slightly better at eco-friendliness
The environmental impact on resource processing, manufacturing, shipping (possibly 2 lots of shipping), packaging and eventual disposal.
Which is the same for any alarm clock
…
epic fail. how do you think water gets to your premises?
Gravity.
It falls from the sky or falls through the water pipes connected to a reservoir which is higher than i am.
No. Water is electrically pumped from dams, reservoirs, underground, and desalination plants to small water towers and hilltops reservoirs scattered around out cities and towns. From there it relies an gravity, but if the power is out for a few days, the tank can empty.
Actually more serious is the energy spent manufacturing and delivering it. Cool gadget though, but thanks I don't need another clock around the place.
Would be ironic if I couldn't use it in the shower because it's not waterproof.
The excess water would probably make it go faster.
Maybe I can use it to travel through time.
Only if it produces 1.21 Gigawatts.
I bought one from thinkgeek, it died within a few weeks. Got a replacement, same thing. Gave up. HOWEVER, the one I had was a different design (internal & external) and made much greater claims to battery life.
"Maybe I can use it to travel through time." great scott Marty! no more table scraps going into Mr Fusion!
these clocks only last a few months to a year at most, nothing is free, energy laws state energy cannot be created or destroyed only converted from one form to another
Homer: [scoffs] I know. And this perpetual motion machine she made today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.
…
Homer: I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here.
[Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
It's a mini power station…
definitely uses chemicals or minerals if you want to be fancy.
Looks like a hydrogen bomb. Does it come in black?
Can you teach me how to identify hydrogen bombs? :)
Why not just build a massive one of these at Wonthaggi to make use of our desal plant. Then we can use it to power Victoria and stop digging out all that brown coal in Latrobe Valley. Easy to top up with sea water every 5-7 weeks.
I might forward this bargain thread to Ted Baillieu.
No batteries, no chemicals, no electricity – so no pollution
A lie on all four counts, as per above comments.
Considering the Chinese invented the real water clock, they should know better.
good point, but if better-explained it would be a cheap science demonstration for kids.
epic fail. how do you think water gets to your premises?