zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: From a scientific/engineering point of view, I
: can see the interest in quartz. I'm not sure
: the quartz crystals for watches come
: naturally or are grown in labs somewhere.

: I do find the story told in Longitude
: fascinating. It lays out the importance of
: timekeeping to our society and endevours.
: What's interesting to me is how the conceps
: of determining accurate position of
: longitude, based on time is, still how we
: determine our location on this planet. GPS
: depends on very very accurate timekeeping as
: achieved by Atomic Clocks.

I agree. BTW, I saw the sotry on A&E that you mentioned. I enjoyed it too. The quartz in watches is mined. It could be produced synthetically, but there are 2 reasons that practically nobody uses synthetic quartz in anything:

1.) Quartz is not a precious stone. It is less expensive to mine it and use natural quartz than it would be to produce it synthetically.

2.) Using synthetic quartz would defeat the purpose. For whatever reason, the natural quartz is more reliable in timing devices than synthetic. No matter how often we try to play God, we (men) always fall short. The natural properties of synthetic quartz simply do not match those of the natural stuff. Since it is less expensive to mine it and there is an abundance of it in nature, they simply choose to use the real stuff.

I also suspect that in the case of quartz as a timing device the old saying "a little goes a long way" applies since the stone in a timing device is really small even on large devices.

Again, I too enjoyed the series "Longitude". Of course, I still wonder what the reaction of Navy would have been if they were presented with a quartz timing device that was not only accurate but uneffected by the rocking motions of the ship. As I recall, the rocking motion's effect on the clock was the main character's greatest design hurdle to jump.