CuriousMarc
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2020–2026
25:10 · 465K views · Mar 20, 2020
CuriousMarc powers up a vintage HP 5061A cesium beam clock and explains both the quantum principle and the HP implementation in detail. It is part of a longer atomic clock series.
HN calls it one of the best explanations of how atomic clocks actually work.
4 comments from Hacker News
CuriousMarc has an excellent episode on an atomic clock. this video I like to pretend I can fix computers, this guy can actually fix computers, which is probably why I find his show so fascinating.
If you want to see how an actual application of this works, I've yet to see a description better than in CuriousMarc's HP 5061A series: this video
CuriousMarc uploaded a video to Youtube showing the startup procedure for an HP 5061A cesium clock [0]. They switch on the clock and compare it to a GPS reference. Seeing the abstract description realized in concrete terms through hot cesium tubes, phase locked loops, and Lissajous curves was really fascinating. [0] this video
CuriousMarc made a video last week where he uses a vintage HP 5061A atomic clock and explains how it works. It's interesting to see that atomic clocks aren't just some giant laboratory thing, but a product you could buy, even in the 1960s. this video