Brooke Clarke wrote:

OK so the design needs a "little" work  Still, it seems to be my only hope
of buying a "new" Cesium.

However by the time they get the performance up I won't want one anyway :-)
Oh, and I don't have a Cesium now, I have to make due with a Crystal
(from Austron)
adjusted to keep up with GPS. I keep my Austron at better than 10e-9.
Not very accurate
as standards go. I can do better but I don't need to.

Bill K7NOM

I don't know about an official chemistry definition
but in the context of timekeeping and clocks, you
will see the term molecule used only in the case
of ammonia; the first atomic clock in 1949; where
it is sometimes, correctly so, called a "molecular
clock".

The rest of the clocks -- the ones based on hydrogen,
cesium, rubidium, etc. -- are called atomic clocks
and the happy bits of matter that fly around are called
atoms, by both technical literature and popular press.

A good example of the proper use of the terms
molecular and atomic in the context of clocks is:
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cesium.html

/tvb

Hi Poul-Hemming,

One neutral Cesium atom is a molecule by definition because it
is the smallest possible unit that contains all of the properties
of Cesium metal in bulk.

That is the definition we worked with in the Chemistry I took in
college.  I have never heard a different definition.

Since a single neutral atom of Cesium is a molecule, I don't understand
your reference about the outer electron, unless you are imagining a
molecule of Cesium and some other element (eg, Cesium oxide).

As to the C-beam not working with a neutral Cesium atom, I have already
been hammered by Rick Karlquest for saying that the C-Beam uses Cesium
ions.  He apparently knows otherwise.  Prior to his letter, I thought
as you state.  Now I am just confused.

-Chuck

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

In message 4284104E.9080204@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes:

I was brought up to belive that it took at least two atoms to make
a molecule.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG        | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer      | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

Then you cannot have a molecule of iron, gold, silver...  In any case,
it is just mincing words.  I don't believe that anyone, myself included,
believed that when I said a Cesium molecule that I was discussing anything
other than the metal Cesium.

If the C-beam standard had been invented in an era other than the "atomic age",
it probably would have been called something other than an atomic standard.

-Chuck