This means that battery clocks keep good time and don't gain or lose minutes like a wind-up clock as the spring unwinds or temperature changes. The good thing about electronic quartz oscillators is that their frequency is very stable and unlike mechanical clockwork, doesn't change much with temperature, humidity or other ambient conditions. The rotor has gear teeth that mesh with a train of other gear wheels and this eventually turns the hands of the clock. The output of the oscillator drives an electromagnet that acts on a tiny magnetic rotor, flipping it half a turn every second. The frequency is divided down and reduced so that it eventually becomes 1Hz or 1 cycle per second.
An electronic component called a quartz crystal sets the frequency of the oscillator to about 32768 Hz with a high degree of accuracy. In the case of the oscillator in a clock, this runs at several thousand hertz or cycles per second.
All these are mechanical oscillators, but there are also electronic oscillators.Īn electronic oscillator generates a voltage signal that repeats itself at a set frequency. An oscillator is a device that does something regularly, like a pendulum that swings back and forth, a tuning fork vibrating, a string on a guitar or the air in an organ pipe. At the heart of the clock is a quartz oscillator, which generates a pulse every second.
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