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EEVblog #646 - Gravity Detection Using A Frequency Counter!

EEVblog0 HN recommenders · 2014–2023
68K views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2014-07-30

Dave Jones of EEVblog demonstrates that a frequency counter can detect gravity through the 2g tipover effect on quartz crystal oscillators. He shows the reading shift as the instrument's orientation changes.

HN links it as a hands-on demonstration that oscillator frequency depends on orientation relative to gravity.

Electronics & circuit designEveryday physics & science demos

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5 comments from Hacker News

@snogglethorpe2014 · in “A clock that can detect tiny shifts in the flow of time itself”

> Yeah, they're not sensitive to magnetic fields. But they do drift with temperature Also, gravity: [VIDEO]

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@comboy2015 · in “1 second per second is harder than it sounds (2014)”

My bad, I was before my coffee. One additional thing that wasn't yet mentioned is that freqency depends also on gravitation, so orientation of your motherboard could matter (for the curious - [VIDEO] ). I'm not really sure it's big enough to matter though.

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@SamReidHughes2019 · in “Masahiro Kikuno, Japanese Independent Watchmaker (2017)”

The Zenith Defy Lab watch has accuracy of -0.5/+0.5 seconds per day, which matches and/or beats quartz watches (that aren't thermocompensated). Rolexes, which have a classical movement design, are pretty close, promising -2/+2 spd. Quartz watches' accuracy also varies depending on orientation, for what it's worth. (It has an effect on the order of 1-2 seconds per year.) Related EEVBlog link: [VIDEO]

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@gugagore2019 · in “TI Claims Breakthrough in BAW On-Die-Oscillators”

Maybe if you can show me that if you flick an RC oscillator you can detect it, then I'll believe it's a silly distinction. Or if RC oscillators can detect gravity: [VIDEO] I'm also curious what it would mean to you for two things to be doing "fundamentally different" things. Do you believe in the difference between a mechanical oscillator and an electrical oscillator? Mechanical oscillators like a spring/mass exchange energy between kinetic and electrical energy (a moving mass and a strained material). An RC oscillator exchanges energy between elements that store energy in an electric field and a magnetic field. That feels fundamentally different even in a four-fundamental-forces kind of manner.

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@formerly_proven2023 · in “Why the Position of a Watch Influences Accuracy (2020)”

> Typical crystal acceleration sensitivities will range from about 1 x 10-10 per g for specially constructed precision SC-cut and AT-cut resonators to the order of 10-7 per g for tuning fork resonators. [LINK] Demonstration: [VIDEO]

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