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The millisecond is a unit of time measurement that is one thousandth of a second and is used in various contexts such as photography, sports, and scientific experiments. Atomic clocks are used to measure time accurately, and the millisecond can be important in determining the outcome of a game or observing phenomena in experiments. Plants and animals also react quickly in milliseconds to stimuli.
A millisecond is one thousandth of a second. This unit of measurement used for time occurs in a variety of contexts, including photography, sports, and scientific experiments. Devices capable of measuring to within a millisecond must be carefully calibrated, and standard clocks such as clocks are generally unable to measure time to this precision. People may notice that time measurements are sometimes given in milliseconds or even smaller units of measurement for events that happen very quickly.
The millisecond is part of the International System of Units (SI), as is the second, the unit on which it is based. The second has been formally defined as the amount of time it takes for an atom of cesium 133 to move through 9,192,631,770 oscillations. Atomic clocks are used in the scientific community to measure the second, with several clocks synchronizing their output for International Atomic Time. These watches are also used when periodic changes to the timekeeping need to be made, such as the insertion of a leap second.
A camera flash fires for about one millisecond. Similarly, many camera shutter speeds can be measured in milliseconds, as can some biological phenomena such as the flapping of wings of flies and bees. The millisecond can sometimes crop up in discussions of sports, where athletes at their peak performance can have times that differ by a fraction of a second, and the ability to keep time accurately can be critical when determining the outcome of a game .
In scientific experiments where keeping time can be very important, carefully calibrated timekeeping devices are used to keep track of time as phenomena are observed, manipulated and recorded. Many researchers use cameras to record their experiments so they can replay the events later, and many of these devices can be connected to a timing device that will automatically create timestamps that can be used for reference.
While the millisecond may seem like an incredibly fast unit of measurement to many humans, there are actually a number of events in nature that are measured in milliseconds, and this unit of measurement can be seen quite a long time for some organisms. Both plants and animals react very quickly to a variety of stimuli as a form of self-defense and for other reasons; for example, plants can eject pollen in milliseconds when they sense that a pollinating insect has landed, ensuring that the insect becomes covered in pollen during its brief visit. Similarly, impulses travel through the nervous system in milliseconds so people can react quickly to sensory input.
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