Second Second SI base unit Category="CGS units"Category="SI base units"Category="Units of time"
This article is about the unit of time. For other uses, see Second (disambiguation).

The second (symbol: s) is the SI base unit of time.

Definition

The second is 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.

SI multiples

MultipleNameSymbolMultipleNameSymbol
100seconds   
101decasecond das10–1decisecond ds
102hectosecond hs10–2centisecond cs
103kilosecond ks10–3millisecond ms
106megasecond Ms10–6microsecond µs
109gigasecond Gs10–9nanosecond ns
1012terasecond Ts10–12picosecond ps
1015petasecond Ps10–15femtosecond fs
1018exasecond Es 10–18attosecond as
1021zettasecond Zs10–21zeptosecond zs
1024yottasecondYs10–24yoctosecondys

Origin

Originally, the second was known as a "second minute", meaning the second minute (i.e. small) division of an hour. The first division was known as a "prime minute" and is equivalent to the Minute we know today.

Conversions

Explanation

The factor of 60 may have been influenced by the Babylonians who used factors of 60 in their counting system. The Hour had previously been defined by the Egyptians in terms of the rotation of the Earth as 1/24 of a mean solar day. This made the second 1/86,400 of a mean solar day.

In 1956 the second was defined in terms of the period of revolution of the Earth around the Sun for a particular epoch, 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 during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 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. Reference to the year 1900 does not mean that this is the epoch of a mean solar day of 86,400 seconds. Rather, it is the epoch of the tropical year of 31,556,925.9747 seconds of ephemeris time. Ephemeris time (ET) was defined as the measure of time that brings the observed positions of the celestial bodies into accord with the Newtonian dynamical theory of motion.

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 rotation of the earth.

Following several years of work, two astronomers at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) and two astronomers at the National Physical Laboratory (Teddington, England) 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, 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 General Conference on Weights and Measures defined the second of atomic time in the International System of Units (SI) 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.

The ground state is defined at zero Magnetic field. The second thus defined is equivalent to the ephemeris second.

The definition of the second was later refined at the 1997 meeting of the BIPM to include the statement

This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K.

In practice, this means that high-precision realizations of the second should compensate for the effects of ambient radiation to try to extrapolate to the value of the second as defined above.

See also

External links