Topic summary
Quality factor
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Q factor.
Explanation
The quality factor of devices varies substantially from system to system, depending on their function and design. Systems for which damping is important (such as dampers keeping a door from slamming shut) have Q near 1⁄2. Clocks, lasers, and other resonating systems that need either strong resonance or high frequency stability have high quality factors. Tuning forks have quality factors around 1000. The quality factor of atomic clocks, superconducting RF cavities used in accelerators, and some high-Qlasers can reach 10 and higher.