That big grandfather clock in the library might be an impressive piece of mechanical ingenuity, and an even better example of fine cabinetry, but we’d expect that the accuracy of a pendulum timepiece ...

Here’s how to build a pendulum-controlled clock which can be made really accurate. Retro? – yes, but an interesting project all the same. You’ll need a spare quartz clock which must be adapted by ...

The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or two to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the universe.

From satellite navigation to GPS, the world runs on ultraprecise timekeeping, usually based on atomic clocks. These devices use energy sources, such as lasers tuned to specific frequencies, to excite ...

It would take 15 billion years for the world’s most accurate atomic clock to lose a single second, suggesting physicists are pretty good at measuring time. What exactly they are measuring with these ...