Let's start with a word problem. Assume you live in a busy trick-or-treating neighborhood and that, on average, a group of four rings your doorbell every minute and takes 1/2 oz of candy per person. If you leave a bowl full of 2 lbs candy on your front step, how much time will elapse before it will all be gone?

Answer: It's a trick question. Given that that the NIST's strontium lattice clock, the most precise clock in the world, is only capable of measuring time in femtoseconds, nobody knows how long it takes. Humanity has no device capable of measuring the infinitesimal amount of time it takes for unattended candy to disappear from a doorstep on Halloween.

To work around this problem, I decided to build a device to hand out candy on Halloween in a more...civilized...manner.