Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A unit of time is any particular time interval, used as a standard way of measuring or expressing duration. The base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), and by extension most of the Western world , is the second , defined as about 9 billion oscillations of the caesium atom.
In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of time is the second (symbol: s). It has been defined since 1967 as "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom", and is an SI base unit. [12]
All units in the SI can be expressed in terms of the base units, and the base units serve as a preferred set for expressing or analysing the relationships between units. The choice of which and even how many quantities to use as base quantities is not fundamental or even unique – it is a matter of convention. [1]: 126
The svedberg (S or Sv) is a unit of time used in chemistry equal to one hundred femtoseconds (100 fs). The shake is a unit of time used in nuclear physics equal to ten nanoseconds (10 ns). The sigma is a unit of time equal to one microsecond (1 μs). The jiffy is sometimes used to mean a unit of time of 10 ms. [dubious – discuss]
Metric time is the measure of time intervals using the metric system. The modern SI system defines the second as the base unit of time, and forms multiples and submultiples with metric prefixes such as kiloseconds and milliseconds. Other units of time – minute, hour, and day – are accepted for use with SI, but are not part of it
A base unit is a unit adopted for expressing a base quantity. A derived unit is used for expressing any other quantity, and is a product of powers of base units. For example, in the modern metric system, length has the unit metre and time has the unit second, and speed has the derived unit metre per second.
Clock time and calendar time have duodecimal or sexagesimal orders of magnitude rather than decimal, e.g., a year is 12 months, and a minute is 60 seconds. The smallest meaningful increment of time is the Planck time―the time light takes to traverse the Planck distance, many decimal orders of magnitude smaller than a second. [1]
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us