Could someone please explain how atomic clocks work in simple terms?
I don’t like the idea of atom vibrations that people always rely on to explain atomic clocks. Atoms don’t vibrate, or at least not like that. What happens is you have an atom that has two states that it can be in. One state is lower energy than the other, so the atom starts in the lower state. Then by applying electromagnetic radiation (light or microwaves), you can cause the atom to shift to the higher energy state for a short while. But that atom will only make the transition from the low energy state to the high energy state if the energy in the applied radiation is nearly exactly equal to the energy difference between the two atom states. Remember, energy is conserved, so if the atom moves to the higher energy state, it needs to get that energy from somewhere, and that somewhere is a photon of applied light. So the way the clock works is it takes a collection of atoms in the low energy state, shines the light on them, and then counts the number of atoms that end up in the high ener
