The Atomic Clock – Always Accurate
If you look around your home, you’ll likely find several timepieces of varying
sizes. From the watch on your hand to the grandfather clock in the living room,
and from the alarm clock in your bedroom to the computer clock on your desk,
most people have several clocks available. And at any given time, few of those
clocks will show precisely the same time. So how do you know which is really
correct?
There are several ways of keeping time. The most commonly recognized is based on
the Earth’s movement through space. But those rotations are very large and the
potential for gaining or losing seconds is incredible. A more precise method of
timekeeping is atomic time. Very simply, atomic time measures the pulses and
absorptions of electromagnetic waves. Generally, atomic time is considered to be
the most accurate available.
When you choose an atomic clock, the clock’s time is kept current through the
use of radio signals between the nearest atomic time-keeping device and your
clock. There are several of those devices around the world, including on in
Colorado that controls many of the US atomic clocks.
Atomic time keeping has been around for more than a half century, but it’s
only been over the past few years that the technology is generally available at
a reasonable price to the public. The first few atomic clocks were very austere
models, meant to be accurate time keeping devices and nothing more. Today, there
are plenty of options if you’re looking for accuracy without sacrificing
beauty.
Grandfather clocks are one of the most recent advances in atomic clock
technology. Because these clocks depend on the swinging of a pendulum to keep
track of time, they are notorious for gaining time right after they’re wound
and losing time as the clockworks run down. Some grandfather clocks no longer
depend on the pendulum for timekeeping, making them more accurate. But more
recently, the atomic clock works have been incorporated into grandfather clock
cases. As is true with all atomic clocks, the atomic clocks in grandfather clock
cases are periodically updated to be kept completely accurate.
Most people tend to truly believe that computers are right. After all, computers
know the time and date automatically, right? But remember that someone set that
date at the beginning of the computer’s life, and that you may even have
adjusted the time for daylight savings time at some point. If you want your
computer clock to be always accurate, you can download a program that will have
your computer periodically check in for the official atomic time in your time
zone.
Over the ages, people have developed many methods and utilized many concepts for
determining time. Sundials and hourglasses can give an idea, but are something
less than accurate. Rotation of the sun, locations of stars and the rise and
fall of tides have all been used to help account for the passage of hours,
though they weren’t accurate enough to count minutes or seconds. The atomic
clock is man’s latest step toward keeping an accurate track of time.
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