How A Quartz Watch Works

• Each timepiece is made up of an electronic oscillator that creates a signal with its extremely precise movement. This is possible because the oscillator is cut from quartz, which is a compound of silicon dioxide, and will oscillate when cut properly and used with an alternating electric current. A mechanism built into the watch counts the number of oscillations that the tiny piece of quartz makes, and when a predetermined number of oscillations are complete, the watch hands advance accordingly.
  
  

Accuracy of a Quartz Watch

• Because of this mechanism that advances the watch only after the crystal oscillates a certain amount of times, a quartz watch only loses or gains one-half second of kept time each day if kept at body temperature. Although the science behind quartz watches seems extremely exact, even on the tiny scale in which it is constructed there's some friction or drag, causing the gain or loss of one-half second. This factor is minimized when the watch is kept at the most desirable temperature.
  
  

Self-rating Quartz Watches

• Some more expensive and well-made quartz watches are capable of self-rating (or correcting themselves) according to the standard set by the most accurate of clocks-- an atomic clock. These self-rating watches have less drag, and actually only lose five to 10 seconds a year instead of one-half second each day.
  
  

Low Maintenance

• Unlike mechanical watches, which were the standard for wrist watches until the 1970s, a quartz timepiece requires no winding or mechanical upkeep. More important, they are still more accurate than mechanical watches that require winding and resetting.
  
  

Powering a Quartz Watch

• One of the few drawbacks to a quartz watch for some time was that the battery would run out without one realizing it, and the mechanism keeping track of the quartz oscillations would be off and the whole thing would need to be reset. This is hardly a problem anymore. There are now solar-powered quartz watches that use the sun to create electricity and charge. Additionally, there are motion-powered quartz wristwatches that generate electricity by absorbing the motion of the watch.