![]() Eliminating such environmental effects can improve a clock’s precision. And heat can disrupt the oscillations of atoms in an atomic clock. A slight wind can throw a pendulum’s swing out of sync. These smallest, most stable divisions of time set the timing for today’s satellite communications, GPS systems, and financial markets.Ī clock’s stability depends on the noise in its environment. ![]() And in atomic clocks, the world’s state-of-the-art timekeepers, the oscillations of a laser beam stimulate atoms to vibrate at 9.2 billion times per second. In a digital watch, the vibrations of a quartz crystal mark much smaller fractions of time. In a grandfather clock, the length of a second is marked by a single swing of the pendulum. The practice of keeping time hinges on stable oscillations.
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