First off, this is sort of a spin-off of kbeckers lava clock.
I'd like to be able to buy an air pump for a fish tank that pumps out of the normal filter-rock thing and a flat row of pipes. For most of the day, the air comes out of the rock making little bubbles, but at the push of a button, the flat row of pipes that you set at the bottom of the tanks start to go off in a pattern, building the current time, using the whole "dot matrix" thing. Which would float up to the top. This could go off every hour or half hour, depending on how you set it.
At the moment I think the time would have to be displayed right up-front near the glass, reducing the chance of the bubbles going floating stray.-- swimr, May 24 2004 Nucleadverts http://www.halfbake...m/idea/Nucleadverts [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 05 2004] Nice.-- dobtabulous, May 25 2004 Ingenious and thoroughly bakeable. I'd buy one.-- spacemoggy, May 25 2004 [swimr], this is a lovely idea, perhaps aquaria could have dot matrix displays for pricing / species name etc. or we could have big ones in swimming pools.-- neilp, May 25 2004 So they know when "Eastenders" is on the T.V. of course!-- dobtabulous, May 25 2004 //why would they need a clock?// a case of wrong plaice wrong time.-- neilp, May 25 2004 ... I was floundering for a fish pun too.-- jonthegeologist, May 25 2004 I don't think this will work. Unless you're talking about really small bubbles, I can't see how the time will be visible for more than about a second. Even then it would be moving upwards and changing size and shape, making it even more difficult to read.
You could use a more viscous liquid than water in your fish tank (e.g. glycerol), but I don't think your fish would like it much.-- Thod, May 25 2004 [Thod] the digits would get distorted, but each one only has to be recognizable for a short time, until the bubbles reach the top. For fixed digits (like the hour most of the time) the same digit keeps bubbling up repeatedly.-- kbecker, May 25 2004 I think little short of a practical demonstration would convince me that this is workable. The lava clock is a good idea, but I'm very skeptical that the same idea could be applied effectively here.-- Thod, May 25 2004 Maybe you could make this work by incorperating [Hazel]'s bubble idea. One of my favorites btw. [link]-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 25 2004 Thod is right that bubbles do tend to stray very easy, The amount, however is the big question. By making the size of the numbers smaller could reduce the chance of them going stray. Alternatively, if there were say 20 small (cubic cm) rectangular pipes with VERY thin and clear walls along the front of the tanks, allowing the bubbles to travel up in a line.-- swimr, May 25 2004 "What time is it, Bob?"
"Quarter-to-amnesia as usual, Bob."-- lostdog, Jul 08 2004 random, halfbakery