It makes a seed vibrator for the clock circuit which synchronizes and paces many other digital circuits in a computer. In this primary function, a voltage is applied to cause it to vibrate.
In special cases, such as in an aircraft vibration monitor computer, it may be used in the reverse function as an accelerometer. In this function it senses the vibration and transduces it to a voltage waveform.
2007-02-23 15:26:31
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answer #1
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answered by sciquest 4
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When a small piece of quartz has a small voltage applied to it then it starts to vibrate and depending on the size it will vibrate faster or slower. The smaller the quartz chip the faster it vibrates. Those vibrations also generate a very small alternating electric signal. In today's computers this signal is used as the clock frequency. You may have heard of the CPU speed expressed in Giga-hertz, or GHz. That means the quartz is vibrating 1 Billion cycles per second for each GHz. A computer's CPU clock speed is determined by the frequency of the quartz crystal. These are extremely accurate too.
2007-02-23 23:09:59
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answer #2
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answered by Anonymous
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Marvin is correct.
Quartz is never used as a substrate because quartz is an insulator, not a semiconductor. Quartz is used as a precsion resonant element in many high frequency oscillators, such as the clock which synchronizes the timing of all internal microprocessor operations. A very few microprocessors feature clock oscillator circuitry, including a quartz resonator, which is integrated into the VLSI circuitry of said microprocessor. However, in the most popular microcprocessors, such as Intel's Pentium, the clock circuitry is external to the processor chip. There is no quartz in a Pentium processor. (At least there wasn't in the Pentium III. After that, I couldn't say.)
2007-02-23 23:38:47
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answer #3
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answered by Diogenes 7
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Quartz or Silicon dioxide is used as an insulator on Silicon Chips.
2007-02-24 01:17:51
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answer #4
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answered by rscanner 6
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could be a substrate, something the circuit is printed on. could be an occelator, a device used for controlling frequency. forgive my spelling
2007-02-23 23:08:27
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answer #5
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answered by Anonymous
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