Do you want your time to be perfectly accurate? Go and get an atomic clock.
The common problem of a clock is that there will be a time it might be wrong. So, what if you’re so dependable of checking the time just to keep your job? What if you’re late in your appointment even its time difference matters in seconds or minutes? All will be lost as it may cost your career to be in jeopardy. Really, time can change your life in just a matter of minutes.
With the advancement of human technology, telling the time becomes modern in nature. You can actually know the time by just looking at your wristwatch. Or, maybe you can tell the time by just watching the course of the shadow during daytime. Knowing the time is an endless possibility. There are lots of ways in determining the time, and you will never run out choices. But the question is, are they accurate?
For telling the time accurately, the answer is an atomic clock. What is an atomic clock? You will first dismiss that it’s radioactive in substance. It may not be good to use it, as for the word radioactive to you is only discussed in nuclear physics pertaining to the usage of nuclear energy. Sometimes the word radioactive to you is parallel to nuclear weapons, so to speak, like the atomic bomb.
But don’t be so quick in declaring that an atomic clock is not for you to use. Generally, atomic clocks are types of clocks that use atomic resonance frequency. You will realize that atomic clocks are labeled because their prime source of energy is from atoms. Today atomic clocks are based on advanced physics involving cold level atoms and atomic fountains.
How Atomic Clock Works
For an atomic clock to work, atomic frequency masers must use the glowing chambers of ionized gas or caesium. It is because caesium is the prime element used in the official international definition of seconds.
It is defined that a second is a 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that corresponds to the transition between the two energy levels of the Caesium-133 atom. Moreover, with this definition it makes the caesium oscillator (commonly known as atomic clock) the main standard of determining the time and frequency measurements.
In creating the atomic clock, the caesium atoms must be heated first so the atoms must reach the boiling point and then will pass through the tube that is maintained at high vacuum. After passing from the tube it will go through to a magnetic field that will select the atoms with the required energy level. Then after passing the magnetic field, they will pass through the intense microwave field.
The frequency of the said microwave energy will be swept backward and forward along the narrow range of frequencies. So with this result, it may reach to the point in every cycle where it crosses the frequency of exactly 9,192,631,770 Hertz. As caesium atoms receive microwaves energy at the precise frequency, its energy state will change.
At the end of the tube, another magnetic field will separate out the atoms that have changed their respective energy level where if the microwave field was in a correct frequency. With a detector at the end of the tube, it gives an output exactly to the number of caesium atoms striking it, wherein it peaks in output when the time microwave frequency is correct. The said peak is used to know the needed correction in bringing the crystal oscillator and the microwave field on the required frequency.
So from now on, you already know that atomic clocks keep the time better than any other clocks. It is the most accurate clock in the world and you can really depend on it to keep your time.
Keywords: atomic clock, atomic clocks