Before the introduction of quartz watches, people were using wind-up watches. For a long time, wind-up watches were the best personal timekeeping instruments for people. Let us look at the features of a wind-up watch before we see how a quartz watch works.

A wind-up watch consists of a spring, which is wound to provide it power. To show the time on the watch, there is an oscillator, also called a balance wheel. There is a dial on every watch with numbers and two hands of the watch that show hours and minutes. For easy movements of the watch, there are gears that link everything.

A wind-up watch is simple yet excellent way of keeping time. There were some drawbacks to these watches. If you forget to wind them up, you probably will not get accurate time because the watch would run out of power. The accuracy has been doubtful. You were also never sure about the precision of this watch. It all depended on matching and making of gears, spring and oscillator. The accuracy was also reliant on the timely winding of the watch; when the watch wound down, it would slow down and give incorrect time.

In 1960s, there came some advancement in wind-up watches. The spring was replaced with battery, so you did not need to wind up the watch. The oscillator was replaced with a tuning fork that worked on frequency. However, the main issue of accuracy could not be addressed. Another development was the introduction of integrated circuits, but they were tended to be heavy because of their larger size. To overcome all these issues, quartz watches were introduced.

In quartz watches, a thin piece of synthetic quartz is used to measure time. Since synthetic quartz is consistent, it is preferred over natural quartz. Vibrations are created in the quartz clock, when an electric charge is applied. Precise time is measured by measuring these vibrations. Quartz is widely used in modern watches today.

Batteries are used to power most quartz watches today. However, some are powered by tiny kinetic generators that work by the movement of the wrist. Electricity is created when the tiny rotors in the watch spin with the wrists movement and powers the watch. Just as in a wind-up watch, a quartz watch also has an oscillator. But in this case, quartz serves as the oscillator that moves steadily. Time on your watch is indicated by the oscillator.

The very nature of quartz is its ability to lose very little energy when vibrating, making Quartz a perfect material for the job. Because of the stable vibrations, piezoelectric effect is created.

Quartz watches are better than the mechanical watches because they are more accurate and lose less than one minute in accuracy per year. The long term accuracy of a mechanical watch is always questionable, because it depends on many factors like, its making and quality. Quartz watches also do not need any winding while mechanical watches do not work without it. A quartz watch lasts forever, and only needs a battery replacement, other than anything. If you wish to buy a watch, a digital quartz watch should be your choice.

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