how do the clocks in cars, stoves, phones (I guess?) know what time it is? Is it signals from satellites or something?
In: Technology
You have to set the clock on a stove or car yourself. After that, it’s just a matter of the stove or car ***keeping*** the time.
On a stove, this happens by the clock circuit always being powered from the wall plug.
On a car, this happens by the clock circuit always being powered from the car battery. If someone disconnects the car battery or the car battery goes dead, the clock will “forget” the time.
On a cell phone, the cellular towers tell the phone what time it is, and then the phone can continue to do its own timekeeping if you put it into airplane mode or otherwise have no signal.
On some clocks like a fancy alarm clock or a 1990s-2000s era TV, the clock can listen for a time code hidden in a radio signal.
As for satellites… GPS devices set their time by satellite.
Funny enough, the “GPS signal” that a GPS uses to figure out where it is, is very little more than a time-code. The GPS receives timecodes from multiple satellites and figures out its location based on how long it took each satellite’s code to reach it.
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