A femtosecond is a very small unit of time used in scientific research, equal to one quadrillionth of a second. It is part of the International System of Units and is used to measure extremely fast chemical reactions. Femtosecond pulse modeling allows scientists to visualize intermediate steps of reactions on a measurable time scale. The Planck length and Planck time are even smaller units of measurement.
A femtosecond is an incredibly small unit of time that is sometimes used for precise measurements in the physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. One quadrillionth of a second equals one femtosecond; this means that one quadrillion femtoseconds, which is equal to one billion times one million femtoseconds, constitutes one second. In scientific notation form, a femtosecond is equal to 1×10-15 seconds. For context, even the fastest chemical reactions are measured in hundreds of femtoseconds. The number of femtoseconds in a second is far greater than the number of seconds in a human lifetime.
The femtosecond is part of the International System of Units, called the SI system after the French le Système international d’unités. The International System of Units is used primarily for scientific inquiry and is built around the number ten, which is generally easy to handle in quantitative situations. While similar to the metric system, it is more comprehensive and better defined.
Femtoseconds are almost never used outside of scientific research; they are simply too small to be convenient. A technique called femtosecond pulse modeling is used in optics to visualize various extremely rapid processes, such as some chemical reactions, on very short time scales. Pulse shaping is used to alter the duration of a short pulse of light from a laser, which can be used for observation purposes. Shorter pulses allow for shorter observable time intervals, allowing for a more detailed view of a process. Modeling the femtosecond pulse gave rise to the field of femtochemistry.
Chemical reactions happen very quickly; generally you only see the reactants, or substances that exist at the beginning of a reaction, and the products, or substances that exist at the end of a reaction. The reactions occur so rapidly that it is generally not possible to discern what happens between the start and the end of the reaction. Using femtosecond pulse modeling, scientists can visualize the intermediate steps of some reactions at incredibly small time intervals measurable in femtoseconds. This level of accuracy allows scientists to observe the steps of a reaction on a time scale that the human mind can actually understand and process.
While the femtosecond is an incredibly small unit of measurement, it is far from the smallest known unit. The smallest dimension distance that anything can theoretically be known about is called the Planck length and is measured at about 1.62 × 10-35 meters. The smallest unit of time is called the Planck time, which is the time it takes to travel a Planck length at the speed of light, the theoretical maximum universal speed. A Planck time is 5.39×10-44 seconds.
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