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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.
Time unit used for sedimentation rates (usually of proteins). picosecond: 10 −12 s: One trillionth of a second. nanosecond: 10 −9 s: One billionth of a second. Time for molecules to fluoresce. shake: 10 −8 s: 10 nanoseconds, also a casual term for a short period of time. microsecond: 10 −6 s: One millionth of a second. Symbol is μs ...
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
The speed of light in vacuum provides a convenient universal relationship between distance and time, so in physics (particularly in quantum physics) and often in chemistry, a jiffy is defined as the time taken for light to travel some specified distance.
The measurement of time is unique in SI in that while the second is the base unit, and measurements of time smaller than a second use prefixed units smaller than a second (e.g. microsecond, nanosecond, etc.), measurements larger than a second instead use traditional divisions, including the sexagesimal-based minute and hour as well as the less ...
A millisecond (from milli-and second; symbol: ms) is a unit of time in the International System of Units equal to one thousandth (0.001 or 10 −3 or 1 / 1000) of a second [1] [2] or 1000 microseconds.
The difference between metric time and decimal time is that metric time defines units for measuring time interval, as measured with a stopwatch, and decimal time defines the time of day, as measured by a clock. Just as standard time uses the metric time unit of the second as its basis, proposed decimal time scales may use alternative metric units.
When a program wants to time its own operation, it can use a function like the POSIX clock() function, which returns the CPU time used by the program. POSIX allows this clock to start at an arbitrary value, so to measure elapsed time, a program calls clock(), does some work, then calls clock() again. [1] The difference is the time needed to do ...