Welcome to Brain staff Fronts dot com where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, how do the automatic self setting clocks set themselves to the atomic clock? In Colorado? Many gadget catalogs and high tech stores sell radio controlled clocks and wrist watches that are able to receive these radio signals. These clocks and watches truly are
synchronizing themselves with the atomic clock in Colorado. This feature is made possible by a radio system set up and operated by NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, located in Boulder, Colorado. NIST operates radio station w w v B, which is the station that transmits the time codes. W w v B is a very interesting radio station. It has high transmitter power about fifty thousand watts, a very efficient antenna, and an extremely low frequency of only
sixty thousand herds. For comparison, a typical AM radio station broadcasts and a frequency of a million herds. The combination of high power and low frequency gives the radio waves from w w v B a lot of bounds, and this single station can therefore cover all of the continental United States, plus much of Canada and central America as well. The time codes are sent from w w v B using one of the simplest systems possible, and at a
very low data rate of one bit per second. For comparison, a typical modem transmits over phone lines at tens of thousands of bits per second. Imagine receiving a web page at one bit per second. The sixty thousand hurts signal is always transmitted, but every second it's significantly reduced in power for a period of point two point five or
point eight seconds. Point two seconds of reduced power means a binary, zero point five seconds of reduced power is a binary, one and point eight seconds of reduced power is a separator. The time code is sent in B C D or binary coded decimal, and it indicates minutes, hours, day of the year and year, along with information about daylight savings time and leap years. The time is transmitted using fifty three bits and seven separators, and therefore takes
exactly sixty seconds to transmit. A clock or watch can contain an extremely small and relatively simple antenna and receiver To decode the information in the signal and set the clock's time accurately. All that you have to do is set the time zone, and the clock can display a very accurate time. The only thing more accurate that you can carry around easily is a GPS receiver which dere arrives atomic clock accuracy in real time from the atomic
clocks in the orbiting GPS satellite. For moralness, and thousands of other topics, is it how staff works dot com