CLOCKS

INTRODUCTION :

A clock is an instrument to indicate, keep, and co-ordinate time the clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to consistently measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units: the day; the lunar month; and the year Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia.
PENDULUM CLOCKS :

Pendulum clocks have been used to keep time since 1656, and they have not changed dramatically since then. Pendulum clocks were the first clocks made to have any sort of accuracy. When you look at a pendulum clock from the outside, you notice several different parts that are important to the mechanism of all pendulum clocks:

There is the face of the clock, with its hour and minute hand (and sometimes even a "moon phase" dial). There are one or more weights (or, if the clock is more modern, a keyhole used to wind a spring inside the clock -- we will stick with weight-driven clocks in this article). And, of course, there is the pendulum itself. In most wall clocks that use a pendulum, the pendulum swings once per second. In small cuckoo clocks the pendulum might swing twice a second. In large grandfather clocks, the pendulum swings once every two seconds. The pendulum swings with a period that varies with the square root of its effective length. For small swings the period T in seconds, the time for one complete cycle (two swings), is

where L is the length of the pendulum in meters and g is the local acceleration of gravity in meters per second squared. All pendulum clocks have a means of adjusting the rate. This is usually an adjustment nut under the pendulum bob which moves the bob up or down on its rod. Moving the bob up reduces the length of the pendulum, reducing the pendulum's period so the clock gains time. In some pendulum clocks, fine adjustment is done with an auxiliary adjustment, which may be a small weight that is moved up or down the pendulum rod. In some master clocks and tower clocks, adjustment is accomplished by a small tray mounted on the rod where small weights are placed or removed to change the effective length, so the rate can be adjusted without stopping the clock.

The period of a pendulum increases slightly with the width (amplitude) of its swing. The rate of error increases with amplitude, so when limited to small swings of a few degrees the pendulum is nearly isochronous; its period is independent of changes in amplitude. Therefore the swing of the pendulum in clocks is limited to 2 to 4. Pendulum clocks must be stationary to operate; any motion or accelerations will affect the motion of the pendulum, causing inaccuracies, There are five basic parts:

Weight or spring - This provides the energy to turn the hands of the clock. Weight gear train - A high-ratio gear train gears the weight drum way up so that you don't have to rewind the clock very often. Escapement - Made up of the pendulum, the anchor and the escapement gear, the escapement precisely regulates the speed at which the weight's energy is released. Hand gear train - The train gears things down so the minute and hour hands turn at the right rates. Setting mechanism - This somehow disengages, slips or ratchets the gear train so the clock can be rewound and set. ELECTRIC WATCH : An electric watch, which commonly means any watch that is powered by electricity, has become a generic term for the first generation of electrically powered watches which appeared starting in 1957, before the invention of quartz watches in the 1970s. Their timekeeping element was either a traditional balance wheel or a tuning fork, driven electromagnetically by a solenoid powered by abattery. The hands were driven mechanically through a wheel train. They were superseded by quartz watches, which had greater accuracy and durability due to their lower parts count. Recent automatic quartz watches, which combine mechanical technology with quartz timekeeping, are not included in this classification A weak point in early balance wheel electric watches was the switch contacts on the balance wheel, which turned the solenoid on briefly to provide the impulse to keep the wheel oscillating. These wore out and did not operate reliably. Later designs used electromagnetic sensing, with a transistor in the circuit to turn the solenoid on.

QUARTZ CLOCK : A quartz clock is a clock that uses an electronic oscillator that is regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical clocks. Generally, some form of digital logic counts the cycles of this signal and provides a numeric time display, usually in units of hours, minutes, and seconds. The first quartz clock was built in 1927 by Warren Marrison and J.W. Horton at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Since the 1980s when the advent of solid state digital electronics allowed them to be made compact and inexpensive, quartz timekeepers have become the world's most widely used timekeeping technology, used in most clocks and watches, as well as computers and other appliances that keep time. Quartz timepieces have dominated the wristwatch and clock market since the 1980s, Because of the high Q factor and low temperature coefficient of the quartz crystal they are more accurate than the best mechanical timepieces, and the elimination of all moving parts makes them more rugged and eliminates the need for periodic maintenance. WORKING : Chemically, quartz is a compound called silicon dioxide. Many materials can be formed into plates that will resonate. However, quartz is also a piezoelectric material: that is, when a quartz crystal is subject to mechanical stress, such as bending, it accumulates electrical charge across some planes. In a reverse effect, if charges are placed across the crystal plane, quartz crystals will bend. Since quartz can be directly driven (to flex) by an electric signal, no additional speaker or microphone is required to use it in a resonator. Similar crystals were once used in low-end phonograph cartridges: The movement of the stylus (needle) would flex a quartz crystal, which would produce a small voltage, which was amplified and played through speakers. Quartz microphones are still available, though not common. Quartz has a further advantage in that its size does not change much as temperature fluctuates. Fused quartz is often used for laboratory equipment that must not change shape along with the temperature, because a quartz plate's resonance frequency, based on its size, will not significantly rise or fall. Similarly, since its resonator does not change shape, a quartz clock will remain relatively accurate as the temperature changes.

The electronic circuit is an oscillator, an amplifier whose output passes through the quartz resonator. The resonator acts as an electronic filter, eliminating all but the single frequency of interest. The output of the resonator feeds back to the input of the amplifier, and the resonator assures that the oscillator "howls" with the exact frequency of interest. When the circuit starts up, even a single shot can cascade to bringing the oscillator at the desired frequency. If the amplifier is too perfect, the oscillator will not start. The frequency at which the crystal oscillates depends on its shape, size, and the crystal plane on which the quartz is cut. The positions at which electrodes are placed can slightly change the tuning, as well. If the crystal is accurately shaped and positioned, it will oscillate at a desired frequency. In clocks and watches, the frequency is usually 32,768 Hz, and the crystal is cut in a small tuning fork shape on a particular crystal plane. This frequency is a power of two, just high enough so most people cannot hear it, yet low enough to permit inexpensive counters to derive a 1 second pulse. A 15bit binary digitalcounter driven by the frequency will overflow once per second, creating a digital pulse once per second. The pulse-per-second output can be used to drive many kinds of clocks. Although quartz has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion, temperature changes are the major cause of frequency variation in crystal oscillators. The most obvious way of reducing the effect of temperature on oscillation rate is to keep the crystal at a constant temperature. For laboratory grade oscillators an Oven-Controlled Crystal Oscillator is used, in which the crystal is kept in a very small oven that is held at a constant temperature. This method is however unpractical for consumer quartz clock and wrist watch movements. The crystal planes and tuning of a consumer grade clock crystal are designed for minimal temperature sensitivity in terms of their effect on frequency and operate best at about 28 C. At that temperature the crystal oscillates at its fastest. A higher or lower temperature will result in a -0.035 parts per million/C2 (slower) oscillation rate. So a 1 C temperature deviation will account for a (1)2 x -0.035 = -0.035 parts per million (ppm) rate, which is equivalent to -1.1 seconds per year. If, instead, the crystal experiences a 10 C temperature deviation, then the rate change will be (10)2 x -0.035 ppm = 100 x -0.035 ppm = -3.5 ppm, which is equivalent to -110 seconds per year. Quartz watch manufacturers use a simplified version of the Oven-Controlled Crystal Oscillator method by recommending that their watches be worn regularly to ensure best performance. Regular wearing of a quartz watch significantly reduces the magnitude of environmental temperature swings, since a correctly designed watch case forms an expedient crystal oven that uses the stable temperature of the human body to keep the crystal in its most accurate temperature range.

FREQUENCY : In modern quartz clocks, the quartz crystal resonator or oscillator is in the shape of a small tuning fork, laser-trimmed or precision lapped to vibrate at 32,768 Hz. This frequency is equal to 215 cycles per second. A power of 2 is chosen so a simple chain of digital divide-by-2 stages can derive the 1 Hz signal needed to drive the watch's second hand. In most clocks, the resonator is in a small can or flat package, about 4 mm long. The reason the 32,768 Hz resonator has become so common is due to a compromise between the large physical size of low frequency crystals for watches and the large current drain of high frequency crystals, which reduces the life of the watch battery. During the 1970s, the introduction of metaloxidesemiconductor (MOS)integrated circuits allowed a 12-month battery life from a single coin cell when driving either a mechanical Lavet type stepping motor or a liquid crystal display (in an LCD digital watch). Light-emitting diode (LED) displays for watches have become rare due to their comparatively high battery consumption. The basic formula for calculating the fundamental frequency (f) of vibration of a cantilever as a function of its dimensions (quadratic cross-section) is:[1]

where

1.875 the smallest positive solution of cos(x)cosh(x) = -1 [2] l is the length of the cantilever a is its thickness along the direction of motion E is its Young's modulus and is its density

A cantilever made of quartz (E = 1011 Nm2 = 100 GPaand = 2634 kgm3 [3]) with a length of 3 mm and a thickness of 0.3 mm has thus a fundamental frequency of around 33 kHz. The crystal is tuned to exactly 215 = 32,768 Hz or runs at a slightly higher frequency with inhibition compensation. ACCURACY : The relative stability of the resonator and its driving circuit is much better than its absolute accuracy. Standard-quality resonators of this type are warranted to have a long-term accuracy of about 6 parts per million (0.0006%) at 31 C (87.8 F): that is, a typical quartz clock or wristwatch will gain or lose 15 seconds per 30 days (within a normal temperature range of 5C/41F to 35C/95F) or less than a half second clock drift per day when worn near the body.

ATOMIC CLOCK : An atomic clock is a clock device that uses an electronic transition frequency in the microwave, optical, or ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum of atoms as a frequency standard for its timekeeping element. Atomic clocks are the most accurate time and frequency standards known, and are used as primary standards for international time distribution services, SI STANDARD FOR SECOND : Since 1967 the second has been defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. CONCLUSION : Thus evolution of the technology of clocks continues even today. With the help of smart
embedded chips and wireless technologies watches are getting smarter and watch technology offers a lot of scope for Research and development.

BATCH 12 : SUJIVAN VADIVEL (11L156) SOORYA (11L157) SWETHA (11L158) VANAJA (11L159) VIDHYA SHANKAR (11L160) VINODHINI (11L161) ELEVARASAN