How many oscillations does a caesium atomic clock make in a day?
Asked by:
Joanna
Answer
Let us start with the definition of the second:
'The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding
to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the
cesium 133 atom.'
So a cesium atomic clock would make just over 9 billion oscillations_per _second (OPS).
Finding how many oscillations_per_day (OPD) is just a matter of multiplication:
OPD = OPS x 60 x 60 x 24
Where OPD is oscillations per day, and OPS is oscillations per second.
So we find out that the number of oscillations per second is:
794 243 384 928 000
That's 7.94 x 1014 in scientific notation...
Answered by:
Yasar Safkan, Ph.D., Sofware Engineer, Noktalar A.S., Istanbul, Turkey
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