Small Dropbear

Why clocks don’t work in PNG

One of the good things, or perhaps the worst thing (it depends on where and when) about my job is I travel a bit.  One of the more interesting places (again in both good and bad ways) was Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Lots of stuff doesn’t work too well over there. It’s hard to get experience maintenance staff, its hard to get the right parts over there and probably the hardest part is paying for it. 

I was always surprised the clocks never work right. They are either horribly fast or slow.  At first I thought the hotel had just not set it right, so I set it to the right time. But the next morning it was out again. What the hell was going on?

Most alarm clocks work off the power. In both Australia and PNG this is 50Hz, so the clock rectifies the AC power coming in to get 50 pulses a second. Count 50 pulses and you have a second, do this 60 times and tick over a minute.

We take for granted that the frquency of power is right on 50Hz, but talking with the students who were doing power engineering it is actually quite hard to do. It’s like having a car with the same revs no matter if you are going up or down a hill.

Anyhow, if you need to wake up the right time in PNG, use the alarm clock on your phone. Otherwise you may be jumping out of bed at 5am thinking you are running late, then wondering where the sun went.