If a thing is tiny doesn’t mean it can’t be measured.
We can measure the distance between states, two countries or two continents. But what about the things that are too tiny and small to be perceived directly? Well, we can measure even the tiniest and minutest of things and here is a list of measurements used to measure tiny things.
The Shake.
You must have heard somebody saying that they would be back in two shakes. No, they are not talking about two strawberry or vanilla shakesbut instead shakes as a term used by physicists. The 10billionths of second are called a shake. It is also a unit to describe the time it would take for a single step in a nuclear reaction.
The Jiffy.
Another commonly used term that we use in our day-to-day life. But this unit of measurement is widely used by scientists. The jiffy is a bit faster than the shake, which describes the time light would take to travel a distance the size of the nucleus. Yes, we are talking about measuring something that fast. This unit of measurement is also used in other places as well such as computer engineering, where it is used for a computer’s clock cycle.
The Barn.
Interestingly, physicists need to measure the area not in the usual sense but in the world of atoms and molecules. So, something that tiny requires the understanding that in their own world, these tiny things can be huge in relative terms. For example, out of nuclei, the uranium nucleus is mammoth. So, scientists termed this mammoth nucleus as barn after the actual barn.
The Planck time.
A Planck time is used to measure the time it would take for light to travel a unit in the Planck length. Now, these units are named after great physicist Max Planck who simplified the universe in terms of the constants that are universal. Before it starts hurting our heads; we just needed to understand that it is a very important unit in the field of quantum physics.
The Becquerel.
This unit is named after Henri Becquerel, who was also awarded the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work in the field of radioactivity along with Curies. The Becquerel is used to measure radioactivity. When the atoms emit particles after changing, it is known as radioactive decay, and one Becquerel is the radiation of decay per second.
Did you know about these tiny units of measurement before?
