[time-nuts] Cheap Rubidium

[Bill Hawkins]

Well, perhaps it is time to think outside of the sand box.

We are trying to remove heat, not cool it to low temperatures. Who
else worries about heat from electronics? Gamers, who buy water-cooled
rigs for their over-cooked (clocked) computers. No magnetic fields
nearby, with enough tubing. Look around in a DIY computer store.
Now all you've got to do is control the temperature where the fan
and radiator are, and extreme insulate the tubing.

Back into the box, microprocessors have been used to calculate
temperature compensation almost since they were introduced. If you
are measuring frequency with a counter, it does no harm to add or
drop a cycle to adjust the frequency.

You'll need a high-stability temperature probe, such as platinum wire
from Rosemount (now part of Emerson), and equally stable conversion
electronics. The accuracy doesn't matter as long as the sensor doesn't
change with anything but sensed temperature. The micro is simply a
matter of programming (SMOP).

Good luck finding a converted temperature reading that is stable to
10E-13. But, hey, it's the magic season when the days start to grow
longer.

Wish all problems were this easy. :-^

Bill Hawkins