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| Wall clock rotor. © Eugene |
The
mechanism (also called the movement) or working parts in a quartz
battery clock is a bit simpler than in a traditional wind-up clock.
At the heart of the clock is a quartz oscillator, which generates a pulse every second. An oscillator
is a device that does something regularly, like a pendulum that swings
back and forth, a tuning fork vibrating, a string on a guitar or the air
in an organ pipe. All these are mechanical oscillators, but there are
also electronic oscillators.
An
electronic oscillator generates a voltage signal that repeats itself at
a set frequency. In the case of the oscillator in a clock, this runs at
several thousand hertz or cycles per second. An electronic component called a quartz crystal
sets the frequency of the oscillator to about 32,768 Hz with a high
degree of accuracy. The frequency is divided down and reduced so that it
eventually becomes 1Hz or 1 cycle per second. The output of the
oscillator drives an electromagnet that acts on a tiny magnetic rotor,
flipping it half a turn every second. The rotor has gear teeth that mesh
with a train of other gear wheels and this eventually turns the hands
of the clock.
This is the rotor I took from a faulty clock. It's approximately 8 mm long.
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| Quartz clock mechanism. © Eugene Brennan |
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| A closer look. © Eugene Brennan |