You are right that a mechanical system like that isn't perfect. You will get a kick out of a thing called a "Tourbillon" if you look that up - it was an attempt to improve the accuracy of mechanical movements by having the entire movement rotate as it unwound, in the hope of mitigating the effect of gravity on the accuracy of the watch over the course of the day.
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Here there are off a bit because 1. I didn't get the sizes absolutely right as I modeled it in Blender and not in a real CAD (like Gearotic) and 2. The gear simulation is iterative so some floating point error accumulates over time.
And not a very good one, gear teeth intersect all over the place:
Good use of visualisation and animation is an extremely powerful tool for triggering that aha! moment.
I also think that this is possibly because this is a model of a real clock that really worked, once upon a time. So the WebGL model works as per the real world clock, not some 'example' model made from theoretical pieces.
It could also be an fps thing
I'd like to see one additional simple version with only one gear, so it's easy to understand how the balance / anchor / escape work.
Another nice version would be a linearized version, where all the gears are in a row, so they are easy to see. Bonus points for a smooth transformation from the linearized version to the actual version.
The animation makes the it so much easier than a verbal walk through. Couldn't stop chiming in; I am working on a pin pallet watch (Amida 542 movement) right now, and frustrated. The blue mainspring just broke, and its a weird size, measured in Dennison units. I need a social life.
If interested in Watch repair buy Practical Watch Repairing by Donald De Carle, preferably 3rd. edition. to start your library. If you really want to build a watch from a chunk of brass, maybe a little gold, and watch lathe, buy George Daniels book Watchmaking. George Daniels invented the Co-axial escapement(an unusual escapement that Omega adopted, and might not need lubrication.), and was a great Watch Maker/machinist. He supposedly did his best work after 50.
http://video.mit.edu/watch/an-electrical-engineering-view-of...
WebGl is so difficult, UI-wise, on a tablet. It's not your fault, but I wish Apple would translate some of the desktop metaphors (scroll/pan/zoom) for this context.
