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Q

 

Hi Don,

My studies are as long ago as yours smile

The Q of quart is much higher - in the 10^6 to 10^9 range, if I remember.

I'm sure there's a (pedantic) terminology point to make:  driven oscillators synchronise, they don't resonate.  Resonance is where an undriven system starts oscillating due to energy transfer from a driven oscillator.  The classic horlogery example is the weight in the pendulum clock that starts to oscillate in time with the pendulum when it reaches a certain length.

I'm still not clear of the advantage of higher Q. It protects the oscillator from being forced off frequency by external frequencies (vibration) not one-off impulses or shocks, and it's not clear to me what the vibrations are in a watch that high Q protects against.  There seems to be a rule that the more stable the system the higher the Q, but it's not clear (to me at least) that the higher Q has caused the stability.

Not sure I can face reading the debates in the HJ, NAWCC etc again smile

nick

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