What Is a Talking Clock?

Clock is a kind of timer commonly used in life, people use it to record time.

China is the country that produces the most quartz clocks in the world. The proportion of quartz clocks made in China is about 95% of the world. The provinces with the most quartz clocks in China are Fujian, Guangdong and Shandong. Fujian, in particular, manufactures about 80% of the world's quartz clocks. Among them, the most famous is Eagle High Electronics. Fashionable home clocks occupy most of the European market. According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, in 2011, the export value of China's quartz clocks was about 1 billion US dollars.

In medieval Europe, inventors created displays that show the movement of the sun and the moon,

According to foreign media reports, physicists recently said that a new type of clock can be timed by weighing atoms. Compared with standard atomic clocks, its working principle is very different. This new type of clock can record time more accurately. Standard atomic clock use

The clock is timed by weighing the atom ^[2]

With the principle of atomic absorption of electromagnetic radiation, such as certain frequencies of light, its internal structure can jump from one quantum state to another. The clock is essentially exposing atoms to radiation to find radiation of this frequency, and then keeps working as the clock ticks. The atomic clock can maintain the accuracy of the official world time, with an error of less than 1 second in 100 million years. ^[2]

Holger Mueller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that recording time in another way should be feasible. Any large-scale particle described as a quantum wave oscillates up and down, even if the particle has not moved. The heavier the atom, the higher the frequency of its oscillations. This is called the Compton frequency. Based on this principle, quantum oscillations can be used for recording time. ^[2]

In fact, the Compton frequency of the atom is so high that it cannot be measured with any electronic counter. Postdoctoral researcher Shau-Yu Lan of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues used advanced technology to build Based on an atomic clock of a single cesium atom, this device is capable of splitting the ultra-high natural frequency of this atom into quantities that are easier to measure. ^[2]

The researchers finally measured the Compton frequency of a cesium atom. Based on this frequency, the researchers built an atomic clock using only a single atom. ^[2]