Speaker 1: Get smarter in sixty seconds with brain Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com Hi Marshall Brain. Atomic clocks are important
Speaker 1: to a variety of scientific endeavors. You can even buy
Speaker 1: wall clocks and wrist watches that will synchronize with an
Speaker 1: atomic clock in Colorado. So what exactly is an atomic clock.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the general notion of a clock. A
Speaker 1: clock's job is to keep track of the passage of time.
Speaker 1: All clocks do this by counting the ticks of some
Speaker 1: kind of resonator. In a pendulum clock, the resonator is
Speaker 1: the pendulum. The gears in the clock keep track of
Speaker 1: the time by counting the resonations, those swingings back and
Speaker 1: forth of the pendulum. The pendulum usually resonates at a
Speaker 1: frequency of one swing per second. A digital clock uses
Speaker 1: either the oscillations of the power line, which is sixty
Speaker 1: cycles per second in the United States, or the oscillations
Speaker 1: of a quartz crystal as the resonator. It counts the
Speaker 1: oscillations using digital counters. The accuracy the clock is determined
Speaker 1: by the accuracy of the resonator. In an atomic clock,
Speaker 1: the clock uses the resonant frequency of atoms as its resonator.
Speaker 1: There are many different ways to get atoms to oscillate,
Speaker 1: and you can then detect and count those oscillations. The
Speaker 1: advantage of this approach is that the atoms resonate at
Speaker 1: extremely consistent frequencies. If you take any atom of caesium
Speaker 1: and ask it to resonate, for example, it will resonate
Speaker 1: at exactly the same frequency as any other atom of caesium.
Speaker 1: Caesium one thirty three oscillates at nine billion, one nine
Speaker 1: two million, six hundred thirty one thousand, seven hundred seventy
Speaker 1: cycles per second period. This sort of accuracy is completely
Speaker 1: different from the accuracy of a Courts clock. In a
Speaker 1: quartz clock, the Courts crystal is manufact extured so that
Speaker 1: it's oscillating frequency is close to some standard frequency. But
Speaker 1: manufacturing tolerances cause every crystal to be slightly different, and
Speaker 1: things like temperature will change the frequency. A caesium atom
Speaker 1: will always resonate at the same known frequency. That is
Speaker 1: what makes atomic clock so precise. Do you have any
Speaker 1: ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send
Speaker 1: me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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