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About these units
Second (s)
The second is the fundamental SI unit of time and the basis for nearly every modern timing system, from everyday clocks to astronomical calculations and quantum physics. Historically, the second was defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day—reflecting Earth's rotation. But because Earth's rotation is not perfectly constant, this definition proved insufficient for scientific precision. Today, the second is defined by the vibration frequency of the cesium-133 atom, specifically 9,192,631,770 oscillations of its hyperfine transition. This atomic definition gives the second extraordinary accuracy and stability, enabling technologies like GPS, satellite communications, deep-space navigation, and particle physics experiments. The second sits at the intersection of human history and cutting-edge physics: once tied to the apparent motion of the Sun, it is now anchored to a universal atomic constant, making it one of the most precisely defined units in science.
Femtosecond (fs)
A femtosecond equals 10⁻¹⁵ seconds, a staggering scale where fundamental molecular motions occur. Chemical bonds vibrate, break, and rearrange on femtosecond timescales. Ultrafast spectroscopy—pioneered by Ahmed Zewail, who won the Nobel Prize for this work—uses femtosecond laser pulses to "freeze" molecular reactions and observe them in real time. Femtosecond lasers allow extraordinary precision in surgery and microfabrication, producing minimal heat diffusion and ultraclean cuts. At this scale, time ceases to be a continuous blur and becomes granular in terms of molecular motion, giving rise to the field of femtochemistry and revolutionizing our understanding of reaction dynamics.