Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
Accurate Clock Pendulums$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
Accurate Clock Pendulums

Robert J. Matthys

Print publication date: 2004

Print ISBN-13: 9780198529712

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198529712.001.0001

ContentsFRONT MATTER
Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (oxford.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. date: 07 March 2021

Putting Q in perspective

Putting Q in perspective

Chapter:
(p.27) Chapter 7 Putting Q in perspective
Source:
Accurate Clock Pendulums
Author(s):

Robert James Matthys

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198529712.003.0007

Q is a clock oscillator's quality factor, a measure of how low its energy losses are with respect to the total energy stored in the motion of the oscillator. This chapter provides some new information on Q and looks at arguments both for and against it. The value of Q rests on two facts: that increasing a pendulum's Q means lower drive forces, which means less pendulum disturbance, which means a more accurate clock; and that historically (but not scientifically), a higher Q generally means a higher long-term accuracy. On a global scale of wristwatches to atomic frequency standards, Q is historically often proportional to long-term clock accuracy. This makes Q significant as an indicator of clock accuracy on a global clock scale. On the more limited scale of pendulum clocks by themselves, both temperature compensation and aging are more important issues than Q since their errors are bigger than the increased accuracy available from an increased Q.

Keywords:   Q, quality factor, clock oscillator, pendulum, accuracy, pendulum clocks, temperature compensation, aging

Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .