How A Quartz Watch Works?
Before the era of quartz watches, people used to have wind-up watches. For a very long time, wind-up watches were considered the best timekeeping instruments around. Let us examine the features of a wind-up watch, before we see the workings of a quartz watch.
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, 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.
Most quartz watches are now powered by a battery. However, there are some that are motorized by tiny kinetic generators that utilize the movement of the wrist. Tiny rotors in the watch spin with this movement and create electricity that powers the watch. A quartz watch also has the oscillator like function, just like a wind-up watch, but in this case, it is quartz that serves as the oscillator. The oscillator indicates the time on your quartz watch.
Quartz is considered as a perfect material because it loses very little energy when it vibrates. The vibrations stay steady and exhibit piezoelectric effect.
Loosing less than one minute per year is what makes quartz watches more accurate than wind-up watches. In the long term, accuracy of a mechanical watch is always in question, because it depends on different factors like making and quality. The other major difference is that, unlike wind-up watches, quartz watches do not require winding for operation. Just replace the batteries, and a quartz watch will last forever. Your choice should be clear; quartz watch for precise time.
Check out wide range of Seiko Watches and avail huge discounts on sale of these watches now.