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How does your smartphone know your location? - Wilton L. Virgo

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TEDEd Animation

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GPS location apps on a smartphone can be very handy when mapping a travel route or finding nearby events. But how does your smartphone know where you are? Wilton L. Virgo explains how the answer lies 12,000 miles over your head, in an orbiting satellite that keeps time to the beat of an atomic clock powered by quantum mechanics.

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Meet The Creators

  • Educator Wilton L. Virgo
  • Animator Nick Hilditch
  • Script Editor Alex Rosenthal
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
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Lesson in progress

imagine this...

your at the satlite and you can fix it/upgrade it. What do you do?

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