On sale: The world's smallest atomic clock

Keeping time used to be a lot more trouble a century ago when a pendulum clock in Paris was the world's time keeper. Today, if you have $1,500 to spare, you can splurge on the world's smallest atomic clock, which is useful in areas where GPS is unavailable.

Built by a team of researchers at Symmetricom, Inc.'s Draper Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, the portable Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) is the size of a matchbook. In comparison, the CSAC is a 100 times smaller and requires 100 less power than other atomic clocks on the market.

“It’s the difference between lugging around a device powered by a car battery and one powered by two AA batteries,” Sandia researcher Darwin Serkland said in a statement.

The clock works by vibrated cesium atoms housed in a container the size of a grain of rice. A laser called the VCSEL, or vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, then excites the atoms causing them to vibrate. The process works like a like atomic-sized tuning forks, and it's their regulars beats that keep the clock accurate. The clock counts the frequency of the electromagnetic waves emitted by the atoms, allowing it to keep track of the time.

However, unless you're a miner or diver, you'll probably not get the most use out of the portable Chip Scale Atomic Clock.

The clock can be used for a number of applications ranging from underwater sensors for seismic research to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which certainly makes it not your typical alarm clock.

World's smallest atomic clock on sale [Sandia National Laboratories]

Photo by Randy Motoya

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com