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Atomic clock facts for kids

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Atomicclock
An atomic clock

An atomic clock is a clock that works with atoms, as opposed to most other clocks which are mechanical. The frequency comes from the crossing radiation of electrons. Atomic clocks are currently the most exact clocks of the world. They are also called primary clocks.

Most clocks know the time because they count how many times something moves back and forth. Atomic clocks count how many times an atom wiggles back and forth.

Worldwide, there are over 260 atomic clocks at over 60 different places. All data is collected at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, France. The International Atomic Time is calculated there.

The basics were developed by Isidor Isaac Rabi. He was an American physicist at Columbia University. He got the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944.

Images for kids

  • Usno-mc

    The master atomic clock ensemble at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., which provides the time standard for the U.S. Department of Defense. The rack mounted units in the background are Microsemi (formerly HP) 5071A caesium beam clocks. The black units in the foreground are Microsemi (formerly Sigma-Tau) MHM-2010 hydrogen maser standards.

  • Atomic Clock-Louis Essen

    Louis Essen (right) and Jack Parry (left) standing next to the world's first caesium-133 atomic clock (1955)

  • President Piñera receives ESO's first atomic clock

    A caesium atomic clock from 1975 (upper unit) and battery backup (lower unit)

  • Ytterbium Lattice Double Clock with Photons at NIST

    A ytterbium lattice clock that uses photons to measure time precisely

  • 18pml015 clock-chip-with-coffee-bean 2mb

    The heart of NIST's next-generation miniature atomic clock – ticking at high "optical" frequencies-- is this vapor cell on a chip, shown next to a coffee bean for scale.

  • PSFS since T190

    Data points representing atomic clocks around the world that define International Atomic Time (TAI)

  • 121205-F-CX842-001

    A team of United States Air Force airmen carrying a rubidium clock.

  • Hydrogen maser

    Hydrogen maser

  • Strontium Clock (12196092854)

    An experimental strontium-based optical clock

  • JILA's strontium optical atomic clock

    May 2009– JILA's strontium optical atomic clock is based on neutral atoms. Shining a blue laser onto ultracold strontium atoms in an optical trap tests how efficiently a previous burst of light from a red laser has boosted the atoms to an excited state. Only those atoms that remain in the lower energy state respond to the blue laser, causing the fluorescence seen here.

  • Ytterbium Lattice Atomic Clock (10444764266)

    One of NIST's 2013 pair of ytterbium optical lattice atomic clocks

  • 17jila003 3d strontium atomic clock

    JILA's 2017 three-dimensional (3-D) quantum gas atomic clock consists of a grid of light formed by three pairs of laser beams. A stack of two tables is used to configure optical components around a vacuum chamber. Shown here is the upper table, where lenses and other optics are mounted. A blue laser beam excites a cube-shaped cloud of strontium atoms located behind the round window in the middle of the table. Strontium atoms fluoresce strongly when excited with blue light.

  • ESA Galileo Passive Hydrogen Maser

    Space Passive Hydrogen Maser used in ESA Galileo satellites as a master clock for an onboard timing system

See also

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