Huh, now that is interesting - our microwave’s clock continually edges forward until it’s a few minutes out from the oven clock right next to it. I wonder if that’s why. I’m in the UK and as far as I know, all our appliances are too, but maybe not?
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Overzeetop@kbin.social 7 months agoFunny effect, though - many cheap electronics (think coffee makers and microwave ovens) use the line frequency as a time base. Taking a 60Hz or 50Hz appliance and plugging it into the other causes the clock to be off.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Overzeetop@kbin.social 7 months ago
That's probably just fluctuations in the line frequency and the method for keeping time varying between the two (one might use a crystal that drifts). Being on the "wrong" frequency will have it shift by hours every day. I had a (US/60Hz origin) microwave in my apartment in Bonaire (50Hz) last year that never seemed to have the right time, and when I did the math I realized it was the frequency - it was behind by ~4 extra hours every day (50/60 x 24 hours).
sanguinepar@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh ok, it’s usually a few minutes over the course of a week or so, so I guess it’s not that! :-)
Overzeetop@kbin.social 7 months ago
Yeah, that's just a shitty (or out of spec) time base. My Seiko watch gains 1-2 minutes a day, but it's completely mechanical so it depends on temperature and winding/mechanism tension for accuracy. There are electronic timing circuits which are resistance and capacity based, and as the resistance and capacitance of the system drift (time/age and temperature) they also drift. A crystal, made to vibrate at high frequency (piezoelectrically, iirc), will provide a much more stable time base and be accurate to seconds over many days' time.
Interesting aside - time keeping is how ships at sea used to determine where they were in the ocean. Latitude can be found from the stars, but longitude can't so it needs a time reference standard. The book, Longitude tells the story of the search and the competing methods for determining location prior to the invention of crystal/electronic time bases and modern GPS. I won't say that the storytelling is particularly gripping, but the actual path to discovery is fascinating.
MeanEYE@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yup.
kadu@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Not only that, but the grid frequency is not perfect and oscillates a bit constantly.
Investigators can then take the background electrical noise in audio recordings, look at the spectrum, and pinpoint the moment in time they were recorded based on the specific oscillations heard.