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As the spring uncoils, it powers the gears Spring inside the clock to store up potential energy to keep the pendulum movingįor the next 24 hours. Air resistance andįriction will soon use up its energy and bring it to a halt. This is that the pendulum will keep stopping. Swing back and forth roughly once each second. If the string is about 25cm (10 inches) long, the pendulum will You can make a pendulum clock by tying a weight to a piece of
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It was one of the great discoveries we owe to Galileo. Photo: Pendulum power: This swinging rod (with a weight at the bottom) is what keeps the time in a grandfather clock. To put it another way: the gears in a pendulum clock are Them into minutes and hours, displayed on the hands that sweep round The gears count the number of seconds that pass and convert Of the gears (interlocking wheels with teeth cut into their edges). In a clock, the pendulum's job is to regulate the speed In Italy, and using his pulse to time it as it movedīack and forth. Heįigured this out by watching a huge lamp swinging on a chain from the Pendulum of a certain length always takes the same time to swing backĪnd forth, no matter how heavy it is or how big a swing it makes. The Italian physicist Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) discovered that a Long rod or a weight on a string that swings back and forth. Some of theĮarliest clocks used swinging pendulums to keep time. Not bad, eh? The trouble is, most of us have better things to do allĭay than say "elephant." That's why people invented clocks. How well you keep time over a minute, compared to your watch. Say your elephants from one to sixty and see Two", "elephant three".), you'll find you can keep time prettyĪccurately. That takes exactly one second to say (Like "elephant one", "elephant If you count seconds by repeating a phrase Think about how it does so? Probably the simplest clock you could We all know that a clock keeps time, but have you ever stopped to But how does the quartz crystal bit actually work?.Why do quartz watches gain or lose time at all?.Note that this is an analogĬlock (one with hands): quartz clocks and watches don't have to be digital (have numeric displays). Because it's so accurate and reliable, it's very much a selling point-which is why clocks like this proudly have the word "quartz" plastered prominently across their dials. That's why it's now used in even the most inexpensive timepieces. Photo: Quartz is really cheap and the clocks that use it need hardly any moving parts. Quartz clocks and watches instead-but what are they and how do they Watches used to be the best way of doing this. That meant we neededĪccurate ways of keeping time. Seconds as well as days, months, and years. Sophisticated, people needed to keep track of hours, minutes, and But as the world became ever more frantic and People found this kind of "astronomical timekeeping" good enough for Moon and Earth move around the Sun in the sky. We have a calendar based onĭays, months, and years-periods of time that relate to how the We get up when the Sun rises (or some timeĪfter) and go to bed when it sets. There's no question the planets rule our lives.