How A Quartz Watch Works?
Normal wind-up watches were in use long before the quartz watch came in to being. Wind-up watches were the best timekeeping instruments for people for a long time. Examining the workings of a wind-up watch is prudent before we look at the function of a quartz watch.
A wind-up watch consists of a spring, which is wound to provide it power. To show the time on the watch, there is an oscillator, also called a balance wheel. There is a dial on every watch with numbers and two hands of the watch that show hours and minutes. For easy movements of the watch, there are gears that link everything.
A straight forward and simple way of keeping time is the wind-up watch. Wind-up watches do have some drawbacks. If you ever forgot to wind it up, you used to get an inaccurate time because the watch used to run out of power. The precision of these watches has always been unsure. The accuracy of the watch was also in question since you were never sure of the matching and making of gears, spring and oscillator. The function of precision was dependent on winding of the watch; when the spring wound down, it would slow down the oscillator and give inexact time.
In 1960s, there came some advancement in wind-up watches. The spring was replaced with battery, so you did not need to wind up the watch. The oscillator was replaced with a tuning fork that worked on frequency. However, the main issue of accuracy could not be addressed. Another development was the introduction of integrated circuits, but they were tended to be heavy because of their larger size. To overcome all these issues, quartz watches were introduced.
A slim piece of synthetic quartz is used in quartz watches to measure time. Synthetic quartz is preferred over natural quartz because of its consistency. To generate vibration in the quartz clock, electric charge is applied. This vibration is necessary to keep the precise time. All modern watches today use quartz.
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 a perfect material because it loses very less energy when it vibrates. The vibrations stay stable and demonstrate piezoelectric effect. The vibration is generated by this 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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