How a quartz watch works 

I was struck by the seemingly odd specificity of 32,768 Hz. So, I looked it up and it turns out that it's the overflow of a 15 bit binary digital counter. 2^15 = 32768. So, each time the counter reaches 32768, it sends an output. Effectively, the 16th bit changes state at 1Hz and you get your seconds. Thank you for the pleasant diversion.

The inexpensiveness of items with such marvelous technologies in them just shows the true power of mass production and well thought out delivery routes.

This man was absolutely ahead of his time In making quality, youtube content. Screw it, I'm gonna go buy his book.

It's amazing how accurate and inexpensive quartz timer technology is. I remember the pre-quartz years when the first Computer Watch came to stores costing $100 in the late 1970s and they were not as accurate at all but it was a blast seeing someone check the time in the movie theatre. Now at the $ store a quarts watch, guess how much!

I've also read that crystals can be tuned by electrochemical etching / plating. Oscillating piezos are used in evaporation equipment to determine the thickness of the film being deposited, because the frequency changes as material builds up on it's surface.

So you got a gold watch for $9.99? Pretty spiffy.

@engineerguyvideo Yes! Piezo devices are so fascinating and could be the subject of 100's of videos.

As usual, I am agog with the stunning revelations about everyday science you make in your terrific videos. I hope you understand how much good you do, insofar as telling folks how they should appreciate the little technological miracles on their wrists.

Hey Bill, I'm on page 50 of your book. Gotta' say I love it. Thank you and your team for creating such an insightful and entertaining piece of literature. I often read sections twice because the information although clear, can be complicated to someone who is not usually exposed to such studies. My brain is thoroughly worked and I thank you for that.

Great explanation. I love these videos about how everyday products work. I'm sure most people don't even realize how much engineering went into something so common as the digital watch.

Best channel ever!

It's amazing to see you could explain a complex and boring thing for masses understand easily !!

I love watching these videos late at night because they put me to sleep. Not because they're boring, I love this channel, but because Bill's voice is so velvety smooth that I just feel safe.

Again an elemetary part of todays everyday life explained with passion. i like your vids more and more.

I feel like good teachers are excellent explainers like Bill Hammack!

I'm a watchmaker and i aprove this message! xD Engineerguy is awesome in so many levels

So chill. No unnecessary drawing or loud gimmicks! RU-vid should have sent me to his channel sooner.

Of course this would have taken too much air time... but I'm assuming the reason it's tuned to exactly 32,768Hz is because it's a power of 2. It probably factored into the circuit design, and is probably yet another reason why quartz was chosen as a material.

I watched 3 of these videos and already learned more science & engineering in the past 10 minutes than I did in 4 years of high school.

This guy! You have changed everything about my homeschooling. Bless you!

After watching two tutorial videos, I am now subscribed. From Charleston AFB SC, thank you Mr. Hammack! You make every day apparatuses more understandable and enjoyable, one video at a time.

Why do people dislike such a good video?

Your videos are fantastic. Concise and with great commentary.

This guy is awesome. He actually shines new light on shit I didn't even think about anymore.

I so appreciate your multitude of informative videos! Being a musician and unemployed at the moment, I unfortunately won't be purchasing your book anytime soon, but want to thank you for giving freely to those who are curious, instead of making "teaser" videos that just try and hook viewers into a sale so that they can really learn something. I just watched all your videos, learned a ton, and look forward to having enough spare money to explore in-depth with your book. Thanks again Bill :)

I did not know about fine-tuning the frequency by removing bits of gold. That's really cool!

Thank you for this informative video! I have to write an article for why someone would want to buy quartz movement or automatic movement, and your diagrams and explanations helped me alot! It will make things so much easier to write this in terms people like me could understand!!!

This video was exactly what I spent half an hour searching for. This video was very well done.

I think every second of this video was valuable, thank you so much

The “tines move back and forth” .. reminds me of washing up with my father, who told me I have to clean between the fork tines. I love people who know the right words for things.

This was very interesting! I'm not an engineer but I felt curious after I bought a watch, thanks for sharing with us!

Excellent explanation, very clear and intuitive, thank you.

I love your videos. If colleges around the world explain stuff with such simplicity, there will be many more engineers and inventions.

I've been on youtube actively since 2006, why is it in 2020 that I am getting your wonderful channel recommended to me finally? So many great videos, all now about a decade old! Thanks RU-vid algorithm, another satisfied customer lol

I knew roughly why quartz was used in watches like this, but I didn't know that it was a quartz fork, or tuned with gold--very interesting! It is, indeed, rather amazing that they're so cheap!

Great video, very informative! I already knew about the constant resonance of some measurement of the quartz but it was great to see this all put together in a way anybody can see. Also, I didn't know they actually shaped it like a fork, or used gold to perfect the timing.

I've been searching on the internet for quartz watches and I couldn't understand at all...until i watched this video. Thanks!!

awesome video. so simple and now I understand much better the technology behind the Quartz watches. nice vid. 🤘

It's great to see someone stand up for the quartz movement.

I love this channel. You are doing great work to educate, enlighten and engage! Awesome I am glad to know there is someone else like me on the planet

This is my favorite Bill video

Thank you very much for this video! Were doing digital clocks in electronics and to see what's at the heart of it is rather fascinating. Thank you for this informative video!

best video about quartz watches, finally understood it!

very well explained and in a quick and accurate way. so amazing, subscribed!

The Accutron watches from the late 1950's used a tuning fork principle, in fact you could see it in the watch and it became the logo of the brand. Very accurate by 1960's standards, but batteries had to be changed often. The beauty of the Accutron was its fluid sweep second hand which moved smoothly around the dial, imitating the rotation of the earth itself. Gorgeous !!

BTW I really like your presentation style. I bet your lectures are quite interesting.

Thank You, TheEngineerGuy! All this time I thought digital clocks worked using conductors. That each time a conductor was fully charged it discharges and we get "ticks" and a given number of these ticks gives us our seconds. Turns out it's much more elaborate.

Hey Bill, You do a great job with these shorts. I and the kids love them! We stumbled on your aluminum cans video years ago and were hooked. Thanks for your teaching!

I've Always wanted to know this, but always forget to look it up on wikipedia! This video is great! It saves a lot of time, since I don't read super fast.

I was supposed to sleep an hour ago.....thank you Dr. Hammock for making such amazing videos! :D

Wow, explained so quickly and simply while making perfect sense of it. Meanwhile I just watched some other guy draw little diagrams for 15 minutes trying to explain it and all I got from that was being even more confused than when I started watching.

You're the Bill Nye to my adulthood. I love these vids.

I knew the watches used a quartz crystal, but, being in radio, I thought that they would be shaped like a simple plate, which expands and contracts to set a radio transmitter frequency. This is extremely interesting. I have a tuning fork Bulova Accutron watch, that vibrates at 360 HZ, which can actually be seen and heard if you hold it to your ear. I also have a more modern Bulova watch which has a crystal that vibrates 8 times the frequency of a regular quartz watch. That is 262144 Hz. I also have a few "Atomic" watches made by Casio and G-Force. These watches are really crystal controlled watches with a tiny radio receiver that receives time signals from radio station WWVB. WWVB broadcasts its time signal at a frequency of 20 KHZ. The watch keeps good time with the crystal, but once a day, any it gets corrected by the radio signal. I am tempted to get one of those cheap watches and open it up myself. But, I would not want to open up my Bulova, so my question is, does the Bulova also use a tuning fork shaped crystal at 262144? It would have to be extremely small.

this is my new favorite channel.

Excellent explanation well paced - not silly. Thanks

You Make complicated things easy to understand .... You are great sir 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Now these are some videos I can watch all day.

congrats man! you made the best of youtube podcast! Another great video as usual.

That said, thank you for these videos. They are well done and quite enlightening to watch!

great video! BUT YOU DON'T HIT A TUNING FORK WITH A FREAKING HAMMER!

Starting around the 2:35 mark I kept expecting you to smash the watch with that hammer... that's what I get for going back and watching your older videos! :)

I can't stop watching your videos! So awesome!

Wow..very very well edited together video, very informative and entertaining...good music! :) I never knew that about watches.

This person teaches far better engineering than my teachers ever did.

SO thats why during my childhood i love touching 2 soldering connector at the tuning fork and see the watch go off/reset. I dont know why during that time but i love it.

wicked! you even touched on the chemical stability.

Do you plan on making any more videos? I think I speak for all the viewers when I say PLEASE! YOUR PASSION FOR ENGINEERING AND NATURAL SKILL WITH TEACHING AN INFORMATIVE LESSON IS TOO GREAT TO BE WASTED!

Always wondered what a "quartz" digital watch meant. Thanks for the informative video.

I think the more interesting application of piezoelectric circuits, is acoustic guitar pickups. Using the vibration of the strings to vibrate the quartz and generate a signal is truly amazing.

Damn, Bill. Your videos are so interesting... I find myself doing nothing all day but learning!

the greatness of technology! Thank you people who discover new things!

Wow, fabulous breakdown and explanation, simplifying it. Thank you

love your explanation, I often wondered how the quartz worked in a watch!

Thank you, I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Very fascinating insight. I hope you keep making these!

A quartz tuning fork is subject to temperature and pressure, it becomes inaccurate eventually. The atomic clock is the pinnacle of time keeping precisely. Even with the compensation with gold capping, it still has major physical inaccuracies. To get to the atomic level is surely called fine tuning a system. I would agree that having such tech available to anyone is amazing, and we tend to overlook it, but if you relied on this technology for things such as GPS, you would not be able to transmit signals to their exact designation, it would be off, by roughly 300 metres. I must agree with a simple watch being actually not so simple though :)

Great video. Interesting, understandable, but not dumbed down. Keep up the good work!

This is the best advert for a quartz watch

Love how they make the crystal guess and check style. It's like dry walling time.

The same concept is used to time circuits in our smart phones. Quartz and the Piezo Electric effect are responsible for possibly the most powerful systems that control the world today

I like this video, short and educative :) thank you for making these! It's like a short episode of "how it's made" with the extra bit of science in it!

Wow, actually really changed my view on these watches vs the ones you wind

I thought that tiny cylinder like thing was a capacitor I was wrong like always

Fantastic video !Sir, You explained it so well . Amazing

Explanation is short and has enough analogies to older technology. I gather resonance is the constant here. Well put together!

So if you strike the watch, or shock it violently, will it make it off time, or will it go back to its resonate frequency only mildly affected? I have the same question about mechanical "winding" watches as well. One would think acceleration, force, or shock (dropping it) would make it go out of whack. Anyone care to explain?

Keep making great videos. Science is awesome. Help people see that.

Fascinating, Bill! I use tuning forks to tune up the human body! Of course, all the same principles apply - we can use resonant frequencies to heal with sound by bringing the body into alignment with frequencies that are healthy for the organs and cells.

That is soo amazing. There are soo many genius inventions that people just don't know how they work.

@engineerguyvideo I just love the fact you take time to replay to messages, even when to video is a month old. Subscribed.

You got yourself a new suscriber!

Thanks engineerguy, we always appreciate mechanical movements at the expense of quartz

Excellent video, good information on quartz watch movements!!

Thank you, it is very well explained.

Great explanation. Thank you.

Wow i just came across this channel and i love it already! very informative!

Piezoelectric effect, neat stuff. Used in active sonar, sometimes used to fuze explosives, and of course swatches.

The crystal inside the clock is pitch fork shaped, the forks are "balanced" using a metal gold tip, just like a car wheel is weight balanced. DC Electric to the crystal terminals and it oscillates. Thats amazing .

WOW! Your videos are outstanding.

Outstanding explanation thank you.showing your family clock is buitiful.thank you for sharing that.rick

Really helpful...i have always wondered about this thing and now i am clear...thanks bro!!