Atomic clock: the location and interesting facts

In Germany, equal to four atomic clocks are in operation. All of the Technical Federal Institute in the Physico-Braunschweig.

• One of them, the Caesium clock CS2 provides us with since 1991, the exact time. Your clock at home or on the Arm, for example, receives the exact time of this atomic clock.
• In Austria, several atomic clocks in operation. Responsible for the Bundesamt für Eich - und vermessungswesen, with headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
• The atomic time TAI comes from an atomic clock in Switzerland. The laboratory for time and frequency of the Federal office of Metrology in Wabern, near Bern, also operates several atomic clocks.

Atomic clocks are known for their very accurate time. This time is standardized, and has been since 1967. The used time unit is one second.

• A second corresponds to exactly 9.192.631.770 micro-waves,-oscillations of the cesium-radiation. These vibrations are the basis of our atomic clocks and our time.
• Background of the functioning of an atomic clock, the physics, the chemistry, how to expect. For today's atomic clocks, the cesium isotope 133 is used.
• The function itself is complicated. Simply put, there is an atomic clock like any other clock from a counter and a clock.
• The cesium acts in the case of the atomic clock as a clock. It is first vaporized in a furnace and combined after that in a vacuum a beam. The caesium atoms are in the ground state.
• In a magnetic microwave field, the atoms move with a certain probability, their condition, and are then counted.
• The microwave field is adjusted so that a maximum number of atoms to be counted. The oscillations for a second, the above named 9.192.631.770 microwave.
• The time is so exact, because the radiation frequency of the Transitions of the caesium atoms is almost constant. Thus, the atomic clock in Braunschweig, per year, only a deviation from a 13-billionth of a second.
• By the way, there is not the atomic clock, it is only since the Definition of the unit of time is second in 1967.
• The first atomic clock was developed in 1949, in the National Bureau of Standards in the United States. At the time clock, however, were no cesium atoms, but ammonia molecules.

Why the hands of a Clock make a right turns, we can tell you in our next article on the topic of time.