Learn · TED

Talk5 min

How does your smartphone know your location?

Wilton L. Virgo · TED

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About

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. [Directed by Nick Hilditch, narrated by Addison Anderson].

The talk

  1. How does your smartphone know your location? 5 min · TED's player

Credits and licence

Institution
TED
Department
TED-Ed
Speaker
Wilton L. Virgo
Year
2015
Level
For everyone
Language
English
Subjects
Engineering, Art, architecture and design
Source
TED
Licence
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as TED states it. Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions. TED's terms
Attribution
TED Talks are licensed by TED under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International and are shown here in TED's own player, as TED's usage policy asks.
Who can watch
TED gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed