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Physics -- Units and Concepts: Time |
The unit of time is the second, s. A second is the 60th division of a minute, which is the 60th division of an hour which is the 24th division of a solar day. Those funny divisions come all the way from Babylonia 3'000 years ago. There are 60x60x24 = 86'400 seconds in a day. A smaller unit is one thousandth of a second or a millisecond, ms. The next smaller unit is again a thousand times smaller, a microsecond or µs. There are one million microseconds in a second. Nobody uses kiloseconds or megaseconds.