The Engineer Guy: How an Atomic Clock Works, and Its Use in the Global Positioning System (GPS)

How Does the Global Positioning System Depend on Atomic Clocks?

Quartz-based watches keep time because a battery gives the quartz crystal a jolt of electricity to keep it vibrating, thus keeping the hands moving. In this video, Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy, shows how quartz crystals given a jolt by cesium atoms do the same for the atomic clocks in the satellites that make up the Global Positioning System (GPS), but with a vast increase in accuracy and longevity. He shows how GPS systems everyone now accepts so casually work only because of the impossibly accurate atomic clocks in the satellites that make up the GPS.