Electro-ramblings

But what most amazed me is the timing accuracy that is possible with a stopwatch.

For the uninitiated - including me, before yesterday afternoon - manual timing involves a stack of judges, one for each position in the race.

The lowest judge times the first finisher, the one sitting behind and slightly above, looking over the head of the first, times the second finisher, and so on.

Events with electronic timing still mostly also have the manual version as a back-up and to allow timekeepers to stay sharp.

It turns out, that the best amateur judges are generally within 0.01s of the electronic timing, and even local officials achieve errors of 0.04 or below. 

To be on the safe side, manual times are only ever quoted to the next tenth of a second.

Excellent, aren't humans wonderful.

For interest -
Inexperienced timekeepers and soon-to-be-angry parents tend to under measure time because their reaction time is included in at the start - as they watch for the flash and smoke of the gun - but not included at the end because they visually track the finisher and hit the button on the finish line.

The timekeeper's skill is in delaying the finish line press just the right amount to compensate for reaction time at the beginning.

Measuring throwing events is equally complicated, particularly for the person who has to spot where a discus has landed.

For me, I shall probably offer to rake the long jump sand pit because, although even this is more complicated than it might at first seem, at least all the difficult stuff is over before the athlete begins their run-up.

'Alice'

Respond below, or to alice@electronicsweekly.com