femtosecond(This definition follows U.S. usage in which a billion is a thousand million and a trillion is a 1 followed by 12 zeros.) A femtosecond is one millionth of a nanosecond or 10 -15 of a second and is a measurement sometimes used in laser technology. For comparison, a millisecond (ms or msec) is one thousandth of a second and is commonly used in measuring the time to read to or write from a hard disk or a CD-ROM player or to measure packet travel time on the Internet. A microsecond (µs) is one millionth (10 -6 ) of a second. A nanosecond (ns or nsec) is one billionth (10 -9 ) of a second and is a common measurement of read or write access time to random access memory ( RAM ). A picosecond is one trillionth (10 -12 ) of a second, or one millionth of a microsecond. An attosecond is one quintillionth (10 -18 ) of a second and is a term used in photon research.
|
|
|
| Last updated on:
Apr 05, 2005 |
|
|
WORD OF THE DAY... |
|
|
|
tier 0
|
|
| LEARN MORE ABOUT... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sign up for the 
Follow us on 
