At christmas I got a clock, and at some point I set it running and placed it next to another clock. Later, when they had been sitting close to each other for some time (a few days I think), they seemed to 'tick simulataneously. They are both quartz clocks.
I don’t know if this is an illusion, or whether I noticed something actually happening, so that’s why I’m asking you people if it is known for quartz clocks to syncronize in this way, or whether the quartz crystals can syncronize in other context. Anything else you can contribute would be good too.
It’s a bit difficult to test the theory at the moment as my clock is with me at in nottingham (where I’m at uni), whereas the other clock is at home (in derbyshire). But I could try checking my clock against one at home, if I bring it some, to see if there is a difference, and similarly check clocks in different rooms (that are normally in different rooms that is)
I’ll be going home in the next week, so I’ll probably be able to check then.
I do strongly suspect that it is just an illusion or coincidence, as the clocks didn’t seem to be in sync in terms of actual time (they seemed to be off by a few minutes, even though I think they were set to the same time.
This is probably just coincidence. How long did they appear synchronized?
What I’m imagining is sitting at a traffic light and watching the blinkers of two different cars–they blink at different rates, but there are overlap periods where they appear to blink together. The closer together to blinking rates are, the longer that period of synchronization.
If you have two clocks that tick the seconds, ideally they should be identical, but they’re probably not. However, if one clock loses a second (compared to the other one) over a period of few days, then every few days they would appear to be in sync. This synchronous period would seem to last for a few days, too, due to the fact that the tick lasts (i.e., appears on the LCD) for a finite time period and that there is a human limit in distinguishing differences in time.
Years ago I tested a pile of cheap-o 1MHz quartz crystal oscillators. Some of them differed from each other by only a millionth of a percent, others were a hundred times worse. A millionth of a percent would give a drift of only one second over several months.
Just by chance you might have bought two clocks which are very closely matched. If so, it would take many days before their relative time drift would let you could hear any difference in their ticks.
1 second per hour = .028% match
1 second per day = .0012% match
1 second per month = .000039% match
PS I found that these crystal oscillators would lock into synch if they were driven by the same battery. They could “hear” each other through the power connections. To break them loose from each other I had to provide each with its own regulated power supply. (Why do all this? To build a spacetime distortion detector of course! http://amasci.com/freenrg/timeflo1.html)