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The
second (
International System of Units symbol:
s), sometimes abbreviated
sec., is the name of a
units of measurement of
time, and is the International System of Units (SI) SI base unit of time.
SI prefixes are frequently combined with the word
second to denote subdivisions of the second,
e.g., the 1 E-3 s (one thousandth of a second) and 1 E-9 s (one billionth of a second). Though SI prefixes may also be used to form multiples of the second (such as “
1 E3 s,” or one thousand seconds), such units are rarely used in practice. More commonly encountered, non-SI units of time such as the minute, hour, and
day increase by multiples of 60 and 24 (rather than by powers of ten as in the SI system).
International second
Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 Period (physics) of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two
Hyperfine structure of the
ground state of the caesium-133
atom. This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 Kelvin (absolute zero). The ground state is defined at zero magnetic field. The second thus defined is equivalent to the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements. (See
#Historical origin below.)The international standard symbol for a second is
s (see ISO 31-1)
Equivalence to other units of time
1 international second is equal to:
- 1/60 minute
- 1/3,600 hour
- 1/86,400 day (International Astronomical Union system of units)
- 1/31,557,600 Julian year (astronomy) (IAU system of units)
Historical origin
The day was subdivided
sexagesimally, that is by , by of that, by of that, etc., to at least six places after the sexagesimal point by the Babylonians after 300 BC, but they did not sexagesimally subdivide smaller units of time. They did not use the hour, but did use a double-hour, a time-degree lasting four of our minutes, and a barleycorn lasting 3⅓ of our seconds (the
helek of the modern
Hebrew calendar). The Egyptians had subdivided daytime and nighttime into twelve hours each since at least 2000 BC, hence their hours varied seasonally. The Hellenistic astronomers Hipparchus (
c. 150 BC) and
Ptolemy (
c. AD 150) subdivided the day sexagesimally and also used a mean hour ( day), but did not use distinctly named smaller units of time. Instead they used simple fractions of an hour.
Medieval astronomers first subdivided the hour sexagesimally in 1200 Seconds pendulum into
pars minuta prima (first small part, our modern minute),
pars minuta secunda (second small part, our modern second),
pars minuta tertia (third small part) and so on. Although a
third for of a second remains in some languages, for example Polish language (
tercja) and
Arabic language (ثالثة), the modern second is now subdivided decimally.
The second first became measurable with the development of
pendulum clocks keeping
mean time (as opposed to the
apparent time displayed by sundials), specifically in 1670 when William Clement added a seconds pendulum to the original pendulum clock of Christian Huygens. Long Case Clock: Pendulum The seconds pendulum has a period of two seconds, one second for a swing forward and one second for a swing back, enabling the longcase clock incorporating it to tick seconds.
In 1956 the second was defined in terms of the period of revolution of the Earth around the Sun for a particular epoch (astronomy), because by then it had become recognized that the Earth's rotation on its own axis was not sufficiently uniform as a standard of time. The Earth's motion was described in Newcomb's Tables of the Sun, which provides a formula for the motion of the Sun at the epoch 1900 based on astronomical observations made between 1750 and 1892. The second thus defined is
the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time.
This definition was ratified by the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960. The
tropical year in the definition was not measured, but calculated from a formula describing a mean tropical year which decreased linearly over time, hence the curious reference to a specific
instantaneous tropical year. Because this second was the independent variable of time used in
ephemeris of the Sun and Moon during most of the twentieth century (Newcomb's Tables of the Sun were used from 1900 through 1983, and
Ernest William Brown's Tables of the Moon were used from 1920 through 1983), it was called the
ephemeris second.
With the development of the
atomic clock, it was decided to use atomic clocks as the basis of the definition of the second, rather than the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.
Following several years of work, Louis Essen from the National Physical Laboratory, UK (Teddington, England) and William Markowitz from the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) determined the relationship between the hyperfine transition frequency of the
caesium atom and the ephemeris second. Using a common-view measurement method based on the received signals from
radio station WWV (radio station), they determined the orbital motion of the
Moon about the Earth, from which the apparent motion of the Sun could be inferred, in terms of time as measured by an atomic clock. As a result, in 1967 the Thirteenth
Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures defined the second of International Atomic Time in the
International System of Units 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.
During the 1970s it was realized that
gravitational time dilation caused the second produced by each atomic clock to differ depending on its altitude. A uniform second was produced by correcting the output of each atomic clock to
mean sea level (the rotating
geoid), lengthening the second by about 1. This correction was applied at the beginning of 1977 and formalized in 1980. In relativistic terms, the SI second is defined as the
proper time on the rotating geoid.R. A. Nelson
et al., "",
Metrologia 38 (2000) 509-529, p. 515.
The definition of the second was later refined at the 1997 meeting of the
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures to include the statement
This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K.
The revised definition would seem to imply that the ideal atomic clock would contain a single caesium atom at rest emitting a single frequency. In practice, however, the definition means that high-precision realizations of the second should compensate for the effects of the ambient temperature (black body) within which atomic clocks operate and extrapolate accordingly to the value of the second as defined above.
See also
References
External links
- Official BIPM definition of the second
- Seconds and leap seconds by the USNO
- The leap second: its history and possible future
The
second (
International System of Units symbol:
s), sometimes abbreviated
sec., is the name of a
units of measurement of time, and is the International System of Units (SI)
SI base unit of time.
SI prefixes are frequently combined with the word
second to denote subdivisions of the second,
e.g., the
1 E-3 s (one thousandth of a second) and
1 E-9 s (one billionth of a second). Though SI prefixes may also be used to form multiples of the second (such as “1 E3 s,” or one thousand seconds), such units are rarely used in practice. More commonly encountered, non-SI units of time such as the
minute, hour, and
day increase by multiples of 60 and 24 (rather than by powers of ten as in the SI system).
International second
Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 Period (physics) of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two
Hyperfine structure of the
ground state of the caesium-133 atom. This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0
Kelvin (absolute zero). The ground state is defined at zero magnetic field. The second thus defined is equivalent to the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements. (See #Historical origin below.)The international standard symbol for a second is
s (see ISO 31-1)
Equivalence to other units of time
1 international second is equal to:
Historical origin
The day was subdivided
sexagesimally, that is by , by of that, by of that, etc., to at least six places after the sexagesimal point by the Babylonians after 300 BC, but they did not sexagesimally subdivide smaller units of time. They did not use the hour, but did use a double-hour, a time-degree lasting four of our minutes, and a barleycorn lasting 3⅓ of our seconds (the
helek of the modern
Hebrew calendar). The Egyptians had subdivided daytime and nighttime into twelve hours each since at least 2000 BC, hence their hours varied seasonally. The Hellenistic astronomers
Hipparchus (
c. 150 BC) and Ptolemy (
c. AD 150) subdivided the day sexagesimally and also used a mean hour ( day), but did not use distinctly named smaller units of time. Instead they used simple fractions of an hour.
Medieval astronomers first subdivided the hour sexagesimally in 1200 Seconds pendulum into
pars minuta prima (first small part, our modern
minute),
pars minuta secunda (second small part, our modern second),
pars minuta tertia (third small part) and so on. Although a
third for of a second remains in some languages, for example Polish language (
tercja) and
Arabic language (ثالثة), the modern second is now subdivided decimally.
The second first became measurable with the development of
pendulum clocks keeping
mean time (as opposed to the
apparent time displayed by sundials), specifically in 1670 when William Clement added a
seconds pendulum to the original pendulum clock of
Christian Huygens. Long Case Clock: Pendulum The seconds pendulum has a period of two seconds, one second for a swing forward and one second for a swing back, enabling the longcase clock incorporating it to tick seconds.
In 1956 the second was defined in terms of the period of revolution of the
Earth around the Sun for a particular epoch (astronomy), because by then it had become recognized that the Earth's rotation on its own axis was not sufficiently uniform as a standard of time. The Earth's motion was described in
Newcomb's Tables of the Sun, which provides a formula for the motion of the Sun at the epoch 1900 based on astronomical observations made between 1750 and 1892. The second thus defined is
the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time.
This definition was ratified by the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960. The
tropical year in the definition was not measured, but calculated from a formula describing a mean tropical year which decreased linearly over time, hence the curious reference to a specific
instantaneous tropical year. Because this second was the independent variable of time used in ephemeris of the Sun and Moon during most of the twentieth century (Newcomb's Tables of the Sun were used from 1900 through 1983, and
Ernest William Brown's Tables of the Moon were used from 1920 through 1983), it was called the
ephemeris second.
With the development of the atomic clock, it was decided to use atomic clocks as the basis of the definition of the second, rather than the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.
Following several years of work,
Louis Essen from the National Physical Laboratory, UK (Teddington, England) and William Markowitz from the
United States Naval Observatory (USNO) determined the relationship between the hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium atom and the ephemeris second. Using a common-view measurement method based on the received signals from
radio station WWV (radio station), they determined the orbital motion of the
Moon about the Earth, from which the apparent motion of the Sun could be inferred, in terms of time as measured by an atomic clock. As a result, in 1967 the Thirteenth
Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures defined the second of International Atomic Time in the
International System of Units 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.
During the 1970s it was realized that
gravitational time dilation caused the second produced by each atomic clock to differ depending on its
altitude. A uniform second was produced by correcting the output of each atomic clock to mean sea level (the rotating
geoid), lengthening the second by about 1. This correction was applied at the beginning of 1977 and formalized in 1980. In relativistic terms, the SI second is defined as the proper time on the rotating geoid.R. A. Nelson
et al., "",
Metrologia 38 (2000) 509-529, p. 515.
The definition of the second was later refined at the 1997 meeting of the
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures to include the statement
This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K.
The revised definition would seem to imply that the ideal atomic clock would contain a single caesium atom at rest emitting a single frequency. In practice, however, the definition means that high-precision realizations of the second should compensate for the effects of the ambient temperature (black body) within which atomic clocks operate and extrapolate accordingly to the value of the second as defined above.
See also
References
External links
- Official BIPM definition of the second
- Seconds and leap seconds by the USNO
- The leap second: its history and possible future
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