Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: neilep on 24/12/2007 16:21:02

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: neilep on 24/12/2007 16:21:02

Dear Peeps Who Live Within Time,

There's just never enough of it......at times , when wifeys on the phone there's too much of it !!

...What's the shortest time interval that can be recorded nowadays ?....i say a second...but *giggling* my son tells me that periods of less than a second can be measured !!..LOL..yeah right !!

Is he right ?...do I owe him a fiver ?

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: Karen W. on 24/12/2007 16:44:13

What then is a millisecond if it can't be measured in smaller segments of time then a second...I know youv'e heard of a millisecond.........(Lightbulb moment)Surely you have just had a lapse in memory! Ben You earned the fiver!!

Also known as a micro second!Here are others!

http://www.unitconversion.org/time/microsecond-conversion.html

unitconversion.org      
Index    Webmasters    Faq    Help    
Software Unit ConverterDownload Unit Converter
   
Index / Time Conversion Table /
Microsecond Conversion
Microsecond, unit of measure
To perform conversions between microsecond and other Time units please try our Time Unit Converter

Convert microsecond to:
second, millisecond, nanosecond, picosecond, femtosecond, attosecond, shake, minute, hour, day, week, month, month (synodic), year, year (Julian), year (leap), year (tropical), year (sidereal), day (sidereal), hour (sidereal), minute (sidereal), second (sidereal), fortnight, decade, century, millennium, septennial, octennial, novennial, quindecennial, quinquennial, Planck time

Links: Download unit converter | Put any unit converter on your website for free

#
1 E-12 s - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A picosecond is one millionth of one millionth of a second (0.000 000 000 001 seconds) ... 1 picosecond – half-life of a bottom quark ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picosecond - 22k - Cached

To help compare orders of magnitude of different times this page lists times between 10−15 seconds and 10−12 seconds (1 femtosecond and 1 picosecond). A femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second, what a second is to about 32 million years. See also times of other orders of magnitude.

    * shorter times
    * 1.3 femtoseconds (fs) – cycle time for 390 nanometre light, transition from visible light to ultraviolet
    * 2.57 femtoseconds – cycle time for 770 nanometre light, transition from visible light to near-infrared
    * 100 femtoseconds – the time required to travel across a human hair, if traveling at the speed of light
    * 200 femtoseconds – the swiftest chemical reactions, such as the reaction of pigments in an eye to light
    * 300 femtoseconds – the duration of a vibration of the atoms in an iodine molecule









Websters own online dictionary
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=millisecond

millisecond
One entry found.

millisecond

Main Entry:
    mil·li·sec·ond Listen to the pronunciation of millisecond
Pronunciation:
    \ˈmi-lə-ˌse-kənd, -kənt\
Function:
    noun
Etymology:
    International Scientific Vocabulary
Date:
    1909

: one thousandth of a second


HO HO HO!!! LOL!

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: neilep on 24/12/2007 17:32:18

One thousandth of a second ?....no ...surely ewe jest ?

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: paul.fr on 24/12/2007 17:34:49

with my incredibly accurate watch, i can see that the shortest period of time is measure as that which a new girlfriend becomes and ex-girlfriend.

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: Karen W. on 24/12/2007 17:36:19

Look at the conversion chart.. you can convert the micro seconds into smaller chunks still.. Your such a smart Aleck!...LOL!

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: Karen W. on 24/12/2007 17:37:26

Quote from: paul.fr on 24/12/2007 17:34:49

with my incredibly accurate watch, i can see that the shortest period of time is measure as that which a new girlfriend becomes and ex-girlfriend.

HEE HEE.. Paul... You crack me up..LOL

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: neilep on 24/12/2007 17:45:08

Quote from: paul.fr on 24/12/2007 17:34:49

with my incredibly accurate watch, i can see that the shortest period of time is measure as that which a new girlfriend becomes and ex-girlfriend.

I find this hard to believe......

.....though I believe the shortest time period measured is the time I can keep wifeys cooking down !!

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: neilep on 24/12/2007 17:45:53

Quote from: Karen W. on 24/12/2007 17:36:19

Look at the conversion chart.. you can convert the micro seconds into smaller chunks still.. Your such a smart Aleck!...LOL!

Nope !!..ahh ahh....ewe made it up !!..LOL...less than second indeed !!..

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: Karen W. on 24/12/2007 18:00:24

LOL..LOL...

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: Pumblechook on 25/12/2007 13:59:23

They appear to meaure to 0.01 sec when running the 100 metres but how accurate it is open to debate.

But in science very small time differences can be measured electronically.  An oscilloscope is one way of measuring the delay between pulses down to small fractions of a microsecond.

Title: Measuring The Shortest Time ?
Post by: lyner on 25/12/2007 15:03:47

There's a sexy piece of kit I used, several years ago. It's called a time domain reflectometer. It sends very short pulses down a cable and looks at the reflections from changes of diameter and other discontinuities. Light and em waves travel at about 20cm per nanosecond (10^-9s) along a cable and you could easily identify structures of less than a cm, on a oscilloscope type display. This involves the pulse having a rise time of a few picoseconds (10^-12s) and a resolution of time within a few tens of picoseconds. That's a tiny time interval to measure.