i have a chunk of this deep purple colored quartz, or maybe it's purple glass...anyway it's on a little key chain and it's adorable. and i'm wondering if it's quartz or glass or something else. how can i tell whether or not if it's quartz?
Quartz crystals are piezoelectric. When an electrical current is applied to them the vibrate at a specified frequency. That frequency becomes the tic (or heartbeat) of the clock, then a counter transforms tics into seconds, minutes, etc.
quartz is used because when you apply a voltage to it, it resonates at a very specific frequency...I believe 32KHz. Then they use circuits to keep cutting the frequency in half until it reaches 60Hz.
