"Science Guy" Bill Nye '77 returns to campus this weekend for the dedication of a new clock atop Rhodes Hall and designed to indicate solar noon (when the sun is highest in the sky). Nye will give a public lecture and discuss the project and the clock's features.
“Science Guy” Bill Nye ’77 returns to campus this weekend for the dedication of a new clock atop Rhodes Hall and designed to indicate solar noon (when the sun is highest in the sky). Nye will give a public lecture and discuss the project and the clock’s features:
Saturday, August 27th
11:30 a.m.
Alice Statler Auditorium
The clock is fitted into the 10-foot-diameter circle on the top floor of Rhodes, intended by the building's architects to house a large outdoor timepiece.
In 2009-2011, Professor Michel Louge led a group of students (Avraham Aisenberg, Erin Boschert, JB Rajsky, Steven Shine and Ian Werris) to design a microcontroller that lets light through the Electric Time monumental clock that Bill Nye "the Science Guy" offered to Cornell, his Alma Mater (Mechanical Engineering class of 1977), for the facade of the Frank H.T. Rhodes Hall. The microcontroller calibrates time with a GPS and opens a Solatube dimmer letting sky light shine at the precise time when the sun culminates over Rhodes Hall, per calculations in this worksheet. Bill Nye will dedicate his clock at a ceremony on August 27, 2011. Bill Nye personally designed the clock and its light guide, and came up with this bright idea illustrating the difference between legal and solar times.
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