How A Quartz Watch Works?
Before the introduction of quartz watches, people were using wind-up watches. For a long time, wind-up watches were the best personal timekeeping instruments for people. Let us look at the features of a wind-up watch before we see how a quartz watch works.
The winding mechanism of a wind-up watch consists of a spring wound to provide it with power. There is an oscillator, referred to as a balance wheel, to show the time on the watch. Every watch contains a dial with evenly placed numbers and two hands of the watch that depict hours and minutes. Governing the movements of the watch, there are gears that link everything.
A wind-up watch is simple yet excellent way of keeping time. There were some drawbacks to these watches. If you forget to wind them up, you probably will not get accurate time because the watch would run out of power. The accuracy has been doubtful. You were also never sure about the precision of this watch. It all depended on matching and making of gears, spring and oscillator. The accuracy was also reliant on the timely winding of the watch; when the watch wound down, it would slow down and give incorrect time.
In 1960s, with the addition of the battery in the watch, there came some advancement. Spring was replaced with a battery, so there was no need to wind up the watch. The oscillator was replaced with a tuning fork that worked on a set and measurable frequency. However, the accuracy issue could not be addressed. With the development and introduction of integrated circuits into watches, this issue was catered to, but they added bulk because of their larger size. To overcome these issues, quartz watches were introduced.
In quartz watches, a thin piece of synthetic quartz is used to measure time. Since synthetic quartz is consistent, it is preferred over natural quartz. Vibrations are created in the quartz clock, when an electric charge is applied. Precise time is measured by measuring these vibrations. Quartz is widely used in modern watches today.
Batteries are used to power most quartz watches today. However, some are powered by tiny kinetic generators that work by the movement of the wrist. Electricity is created when the tiny rotors in the watch spin with the wrists movement and powers the watch. Just as in a wind-up watch, a quartz watch also has an oscillator. But in this case, quartz serves as the oscillator that moves steadily. Time on your watch is indicated by the oscillator.
Quartz is considered as a perfect material because it loses very little energy when it vibrates. The vibrations stay steady and exhibit piezoelectric effect.
Losing less than one minute in accuracy per year, quartz watches are considered better than the mechanical watches, because they are more accurate. The long term accuracy of a mechanical watch is always questionable, because it depends on many factors like its making and quality; quartz does not suffer from these drawbacks. Quartz watches do not need any winding while mechanical watches cannot work without it. A quartz watch lasts nearly forever, and only needs a battery replacement to keep it functional. If you wish to buy a watch, make the digital quartz watch your preference.
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