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I'm going to take your ∞ FPS comment on go on a wild tangent because physics is fun :-D:

Nothing can be infinity FPS because it would be limited by the frequency of the light that we use to see the watch hand. In the case of the visual spectrum, it caps out around 668 THz with blue light (red light is lowest at 400 THz). This would make it "only" ~4.7E12 times better than 144 Hz ;-).



Brilliant!

With that said, though, I believe that the movement of the actual atoms making up the mechanical hands is still happening in an "infinitely smooth" sense, although the way we measure and observe that movement (via reflections of light or perhaps some other type of electromagnetic radiation) may be limited.


Assuming movement is continuous and not in discrete units.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length


You don't even need to appeal to Planck length here, because it's clear from more basic quantum mechanics that particles simply do not have classical paths.


Please don't misinterpret the Planck length. Please don't interpret it in any way, it's right in the wiki article:

>There is currently no proven physical significance of the Planck length;...

It's just dimensional analytical playing with some fundamental physical constants. Physicist believe that this scale length may have some connection with the yet to be discovered laws of quantum gravity. It has nothing to with the "finite resolution of the universe". There is no evidence that the universe has finite resolution.


If time or space are quantized, then "infinitely smooth" would be impossible. I guess no one knows.


Really you're probably limited by the speed of sound in the watch hand


Huh. Now I remember why I read hackernews.


To further complicate the issue, the human eye cannot see 668 quadrillion 'frames per second'. Under the best possible conditions, for parts of the eye, 1000 'fps' is the best we can do, though generally it's much, much lower.




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