How do Digital and Analog Clocks Work?

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Have you ever wondered how a clock signal that ticks once every few nanoseconds is generated? A billion times a second clock would indeed be an impossible feat a hundred years ago. But, you'd be surprised to find that the clock inside your smartphone is rather identical to an analog wall clock that ticks through the seconds, minutes, and hours of the day. In this video, we explore an analog clock's gear train, the quartz crystal oscillator, the feedback loops for this oscillator, and then how a gigahertz signal is produced using a phase-locked loop.
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Table of Contents:
00:00 - Digital Clocks vs Analog Clocks
01:13 - The $10 Wall Clock
02:05 - Gears in the Geartrain
03:40 - Crystal Oscillator and Piezoelectric Effect
05:58 - Resonance Frequency
06:51 - Circuitry Inside a Wall Clock
08:13 - Fast and Slow Clocks
09:04 - Learning With Brilliant
10:40 - A Smartphone's Gigahertz Clock Signal
14:24 - Frequency Divider
15:04 - Thank You to Patreon & KZbin Memberships
Erratum:
Animation: Eikonic Design
Research / Script: Teddy Tablante
Software Consultant: Andrea Ciani
/ @andrea_ciani
Modeling: Prakash Kakadiya
Voice Over: Phil Lee
Sound Design: www.drilu.mx
Sound Effects and Music Editor: Luis Huesca
Supervising Sound Editor and Mixer: Luis Huesca
Animation built using Blender 4.0.1 www.blender.org/
References:
Quartz Crystal Oscillators
www.electronics-tutorials.ws/...
Quartz tuning Fork Resonator Teardown
softsolder.com/2017/03/24/qua...
Teardown of a Quartz Crystal Oscillator and the Tiny IC Inside
www.righto.com/2021/02/teardo...
What is Piezoelectric Effect?
www.circuitbread.com/ee-faq/w...
Wikipedia contributors. "Crystal Oscillator". "Electronic Oscillator." "Phase Locked Loop." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Visited December 21nd 2023
#Clocks #PiezoelectricEffect #Digital

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Yeah- it's a really great question and while I don't have 100% the definitive answer, my theory is that it comes down to the difference of torque. When the electromagnet is driving, due to the heavy gear reduction, there's a lot more torque. This is similar to how when you drive a manual car in a lower gear, you have more torque for pulling heavy objects. Whereas if you're pulling something in a higher gear, you have less torque, and the wheels are more likely to slip (which is like driving the clock gears from the time setting gear).

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