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What if you could tune in to the exact time over the radio? At WWV, a radio station in Colorado run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (@nist), cesium atomic clocks keep time with extraordinary precision, broadcasting time signals that help people and technologies around the country stay in sync. Emma Gometz takes us inside the station to explore how time goes from inside atomic clocks to across the airwaves.
The easiest way to tune in is to call (303) 499-7111, but you can also pick up the broadcast on several radio frequencies.
#atomicclock #time #radio #engineering #howitworks
Transcript
Do you think that time is real? It's a trick question, isn't it? I'm at a remote radio station in Colorado where the US government broadcasts what time it is to the rest of the world. The agency that determines the time is called the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST. You know, they're in charge of all the standards, and one of the standards is standard time interval. And that's our job is to broadcast that to the nation, and the best way to do it is by radio no that it's available to everyone everywhere. Let's go take a look at WWV. This is Matt Deutsch, an engineer here at the radio station. You can tell that's not part of my my, being an engineer, you know, very rigid. This station has existed since 1919. Since then, GPS satellites have become a more popular way to broadcast the time, but this station is still running today. You'd be surprised how many services still use it. This is a screen room that has the tier scale inside of it protected by a Faraday cage. And here we have five cesium clocks that
