{"id":15714,"date":"2018-02-15T17:58:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T17:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/?p=15714"},"modified":"2018-05-10T13:25:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T17:25:04","slug":"understanding-tachymeter-bezel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/understanding-tachymeter-bezel\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Tachymeter Bezel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tachymeter scale is a very complicated-looking ring of numbers (from 700 to usually 60) that runs along your chronograph watch\u2019s bezel. Besides its complex appearance, the tachymeter bezel serves a very helpful purpose and converts elapsed time (in seconds) to speed (in units per hour). So a tachymeter can tell you how fast a car, a plane, or even a runner is traveling over a fixed distance.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s unique\u2014and perhaps a little mind-bending\u2014about a tachymeter is that it functions independent of a specific unit of distance (think miles, kilometers, etc.), so long as that same unit is used in all your calculations. So a 120 reading on the tachymeter scale can mean 120 miles per hour or<\/em> 120 kilometers per hour.<\/p>

\"TrueFacet<\/a><\/div>\n

Here, we break down how to read and use your tachymeter bezel to calculate speed.<\/p>\n

The Difference Between a Chronograph and a Tachymeter<\/strong><\/p>\n

One common point of confusion is considering a chronograph interchangeable with a tachymeter. These two functions are, in fact, different. Similar to how all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, all watches with tachymeters have chronograph functions, but not all chronographs include a tachymeter.<\/p>\n

A chronograph is, simply put, a stopwatch. A tachymeter, meanwhile, measures speed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How to Read a Fixed Tachymeter Bezel<\/strong><\/p>\n

A tachymeter bezel is used to calculate speed or, in other words, measure elapsed time over a fixed distance. As daunting as the bezel looks, it\u2019s incredibly easy\u2014and surprisingly intuitive\u2014to read a tachymeter scale rating.<\/p>\n

To use a tachymeter bezel, press the chronograph pusher to start the stopwatch. Once the object (for instance, a car driving one mile) passes the finish line, press the pusher again to stop the stopwatch. Then reference the tachymeter scale marker adjacent to the second hand; this figure tells you the speed of the car. So, if a car travels one mile in 40 seconds, the tachymeter scale reading will be 90 for a speed of 90 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

Calculating Slower Speeds <\/strong><\/p>\n

The above example is a very straightforward way to measure speed.\u00a0 But, what if you\u2019re measuring the speed of a runner? A tachymeter bezel can only be used to time an object traveling for less than 60 seconds. So, to determine a jogger\u2019s speed, you\u2019ll need to do some simple math.<\/p>\n

The tachymeter\u2019s calculations rely on a fixed distance, so you\u2019ll need a shorter distance that a runner can reach in under 60 seconds. In this example, we\u2019ll use 200 meters as our fixed distance. Using your tachymeter as outlined above, you time the runner as traveling the 200 meters in 20 seconds. Your tachymeter will read that the runner was sprinting at an impossible 180 kilometers per hour. So, to get the actual speed, you have to do some simple calculations; knowing that 200 meters is 1\/5th<\/sup> of a kilometer, you\u2019ll divide 180 by 5 (since the runner traveled one-fifth of a kilometer) and your runner\u2019s speed was 36 kilometers per hour.<\/p>\n

Calculating High Speeds<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the flip side, what if you\u2019re measuring the speed of a plane or racecar that will travel more than one mile in 60 seconds?<\/p>\n

In instances of an object traveling very quickly, you\u2019ll need to extend the fixed distance (say from one mile to ten miles) for an accurate calculation. Let\u2019s say a jet takes 30 seconds to fly 10 miles. Your tachymeter will indicate a speed of 120 miles per hour. But, because the fixed distance is actually 10 miles (or, differently said, 10 times further than one mile), you\u2019ll multiple that tachymeter scale reading by 10 to calculate a speed of 1,200 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

To learn more about watch complications, check out our post on how to use the chronograph function here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A tachymeter scale is a very complicated-looking ring of numbers (from 700 to usually 60) that runs along your chronograph watch\u2019s bezel. Besides its complex appearance, the tachymeter bezel serves a very helpful purpose and converts elapsed time (in seconds) to speed (in units per hour). So a tachymeter can tell you how fast a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[413,433,52,31],"class_list":["post-15714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-chronograph","tag-tachymeter","tag-watch","tag-watches"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15714"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16834,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15714\/revisions\/16834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truefacet.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}