To be honest i find these videos useful and although much of the information is instantly lost , james is doing a great job and these videos are a great resource of general or not so common knowledge
Further my comment on the out-takes video I thought maybe that was too narrow a target market so I have tactfully chosen to spam my opinion on all other videos: I'm so glad the series has started. it warms my heart to see the important stuff being discussed!
Holy poop, I memorized that exact fact about the atomic second from a plaque in the Smithsonian timekeeping exhibit... 14 years ago... And I still have it spot on! Boom shakalaka score one for the old memory.
Ahh i really enjoy entertaining/informative presenting! James May's various TV shows all have a lot of witty lovable charm! I'm still amazed by some of the inventions we've seen like the little eye chip that can help the blind to see and the 3D James May. I'd love to see how much the technology progresses in the future :)
The 60 minute and 60 second division actually dates back to the Sumerians and how they counted. They counted each knuckle on a finger, leading to a count of 12 (hours of night and hours of day...roughly). If you then use the your other hand to keep track of groups of 12, your count is 60. The Sumerians divided their day into 12 day hours, 12 night hours, and divisions of each hour by 60 then each minute by 60; each in equal parts. All related to the way they count, which led to a base 60 counting system. (reference Professor Amanda Podany Ph.D.)
The only interesting thing about this video was how the second is now defined somehow in terms of the decay of the cesium atom... and then you stop without event explaining it!
A bit late, but it's not the decay of a caesium atom, it's the frequency of a photon emitted when an electron moves from a particular energy level in an orbital around a caesium atom to one with a lower energy. That's how atoms, including LEDs emit light. Electrons sit at one energy level in an atom and when the move to a lower one, then a photon is emitted. Conversely, when an atom absorbs a photon, the electron jumps up to a higher level. A bit life rungs on a ladder. Electrons in a particular type of atom can only exist in particular energy states which coincide with those rungs (albeit they aren't evenly spaced). It's the spacing of these energy "rungs" which give certain metals a characteristic colour in a flame. Sodium produces yellow for instance. These movements of electrons up and down the ladder are the iconic "quantum leaps". Caesium-133 has 55 protons and 78 neutrons in its core, and is the only stable (non-radioactive) isotope of that element, which is maybe why it's chosen. It has a very precisely defined pair of energy levels (hence the hyperfine) which means when an electron transitions down to the lower level, it produced a photon of a very precise frequency. Namely that is 9,192,631,770 cycles per second. That's in the microwave frequency region and well within what can be processed in electronics (that 9.2 Ghz roughly is about 3 times the clock speed of a decent computer). Just think of it as an extremely fast pendulum on a clock.
@@armanrozika oh yes we can measure time. There are these things called clocks, and the second is defined as in terms of a particular transition frequency of a casesium-133 atom. There is no movement, just a change in energy state of an electron in an atom. Before you go on an claim that it's a movement of an electron, then really it's not. It's a change i a wave function. Of course, in General Relativity, time is just one of the four dimensions of space-time.
2:00 Honestly thought the Doctor Who theme was gonna kick in... I'm currently struggling to acknowledge what he's saying because my head has started singing "duh-duh-duh-dum, oohwa ooh..."
Since the speed of light is invariant (i.e. always measured to be the same in all situations) it is defined to be an exact number (299792458meters per second) and hence the meter and second are defined from this to make sure this number is exact.
@0:40 is a room thermostat, not a central heating controller. It most certainly doesn't contain a clock. However, it's oddly marked with numbers, like a thermostatic radiator valve, not using Fahrenheit or Celsius markings.
The hyperfine spectrum of Cesium 133 is used as hyperfine levels have very low energy differences and as such the spectrum is largely different from background radiation and is easily determined from background. And as it is very low energy one period is very small so 1 second can be made very precise.
would it be easier to define a second as a derivation of the time it takes light to travel some distance? although i suppose that would be cyclical definitions...a meter depends on seconds light travels, and then a second would depend on the length of a meter
You're not lost, and you are correct. We use time to measure lots of things, but since time itself is not perfectly measured, it means all calculations with time may be suspect. However, this poses no problems for humans on the time scale that we live in... perhaps at some sub-atomic level this may be of concern, but otherwise life just moves on and nobody really notices.
Just started to wonder if a solar day was much longer (or shorter) than second would also have probobly different lenght. So in general time is something we just agreed to mesure in a particular way but has been sort of made up for our use rather than been observed and measured like gravity or electric current? And scince lots of things are measured using time as a factor everything seems to be relative to it. Im lost here O_O
Our perception of time is technically a physical thing because we're just "counting" however many times an electron does that one thing around cesium 133 (sorry I'm not exactly sure what you would call it)
So, why was the original catholic calendar decimal, only to have two more months crow-barred in later (July and August), then the weeks counted in 13 weeks per quarter/ (or season?) like a deck of playing cards, the week into 7 days, the day into base-12, twice, the hours into base-60, with the second [-division] also base-60, then to go decimal once again with the stop-watch divisions of a second. What ever happed to the "third"? How many other calendar divisions have there been, please?
Well, I for one found it interesting - though I had hoped that James would explain his definition. Perhaps a further minute and a half would have been enough to get the idea behind the caesium clock across.
The defination is 1 second is the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiations corresponding to the transition between 2 hyperfine levels at ground state in sezium-133 atom.
The hyperfine structure of atoms actually does not have to do with vibration. Because of interactions between the nucleus' spin and the electron's spin, the ground state energy of the electron is very slightly split in two, one energy level having slightly more energy than the other, depending on whether the electron spin is aligned with the nucleus or anti-aligned. The a photon created by an electron transitioning between these two levels has a very specific energy, and thus frequency. Converting this frequency into a period and multiplying by 9192631770 returns one second.
It has to do with the frequency of the radiation emitted whilst Cesium-133 atoms decay. You will recall from high school physics that frequency is the amount of time that it takes for a wave traveling at (nearly) the speed of light to go from peak to peak.
1 second is defined as “9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom
is variable of the solar day make second always the same? sun loosing its energy and orbiting and may be independent -un touch other factor may need to considered as second, its now the day of algorithm. relation of start of universe /bigbang/ VS SolarDay
The second with James May in it, I believe. But I really think it's a great show, it just sounds a bit stupid (what is one second) but I really enjoy it =)
Second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.
One second is the amount of time it takes to decrease the gain on your SFX using one of Taran's hotkeys.
What is gain?
@@joachimtheboss5326 Watch World's Most Advanced Video Editing Tutorial
ahahah
taran sfx tips
hahaha
Came here because i heard the sound effects were too loud.
Was not disappointed
Taran brought us here @_@
@@0tobsam0 same lol
@@qrdsn such a #1 amateur mistake :D
same
Same
don't ever try to eat a clock, it's very time consuming
I can...second that -_-
+J'zargo lol
+J'zargo me two
They only have minute nutrition benefits.
I hope no one else is going to try their... hand... at chronological humor. Hour patience for that kind of toc is running out.
That's so interesting, the second division of the hour! So simple, never realised that before
Please turn up the volume of the sound effects ... I can still hear James talking!
[/end sarcasm, end video]
Only James May can make me watch a 5 min video explaining what a second is.. James you are a genius !!
To be honest i find these videos useful and although much of the information is instantly lost , james is doing a great job and these videos are a great resource of general or not so common knowledge
I had to pick up pieces of my head after watching this. MIND BLOWN
It's also interesting to note that the use of Caesium-133 in atomic clocks has given rise to the popular and oft misquoted phrase "Caesium the day"
thank you James. not the usual time losing things I usually come across on TH-cam.
James May, you are a gift to the television.
Further my comment on the out-takes video I thought maybe that was too narrow a target market so I have tactfully chosen to spam my opinion on all other videos: I'm so glad the series has started. it warms my heart to see the important stuff being discussed!
Holy poop, I memorized that exact fact about the atomic second from a plaque in the Smithsonian timekeeping exhibit... 14 years ago... And I still have it spot on!
Boom shakalaka score one for the old memory.
Ahh i really enjoy entertaining/informative presenting! James May's various TV shows all have a lot of witty lovable charm! I'm still amazed by some of the inventions we've seen like the little eye chip that can help the blind to see and the 3D James May. I'd love to see how much the technology progresses in the future :)
The 60 minute and 60 second division actually dates back to the Sumerians and how they counted. They counted each knuckle on a finger, leading to a count of 12 (hours of night and hours of day...roughly). If you then use the your other hand to keep track of groups of 12, your count is 60. The Sumerians divided their day into 12 day hours, 12 night hours, and divisions of each hour by 60 then each minute by 60; each in equal parts. All related to the way they count, which led to a base 60 counting system. (reference Professor Amanda Podany Ph.D.)
Wonderful, interesting, informative, humorous videos!
Thank you.
Thank you Bernard I could not have put that less clearly myself.
Great series. I just come across it. I love information :)
I'm impressed by the amount of physicists that came out here to have a say.
A second is exactly one two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth of the length of this video
James May keep up the good work!
Fascinating James may you are amazing and I love airships to!
Only James May can explain what a second is in 278 seconds... class
The only interesting thing about this video was how the second is now defined somehow in terms of the decay of the cesium atom... and then you stop without event explaining it!
Exactly!
A bit late, but it's not the decay of a caesium atom, it's the frequency of a photon emitted when an electron moves from a particular energy level in an orbital around a caesium atom to one with a lower energy. That's how atoms, including LEDs emit light. Electrons sit at one energy level in an atom and when the move to a lower one, then a photon is emitted. Conversely, when an atom absorbs a photon, the electron jumps up to a higher level. A bit life rungs on a ladder. Electrons in a particular type of atom can only exist in particular energy states which coincide with those rungs (albeit they aren't evenly spaced). It's the spacing of these energy "rungs" which give certain metals a characteristic colour in a flame. Sodium produces yellow for instance. These movements of electrons up and down the ladder are the iconic "quantum leaps".
Caesium-133 has 55 protons and 78 neutrons in its core, and is the only stable (non-radioactive) isotope of that element, which is maybe why it's chosen. It has a very precisely defined pair of energy levels (hence the hyperfine) which means when an electron transitions down to the lower level, it produced a photon of a very precise frequency. Namely that is 9,192,631,770 cycles per second. That's in the microwave frequency region and well within what can be processed in electronics (that 9.2 Ghz roughly is about 3 times the clock speed of a decent computer). Just think of it as an extremely fast pendulum on a clock.
@@TheEulerID This is why time doesn't exist, you can't measure time. What we called as time is a movement of things we can observe
@@armanrozika oh yes we can measure time. There are these things called clocks, and the second is defined as in terms of a particular transition frequency of a casesium-133 atom. There is no movement, just a change in energy state of an electron in an atom. Before you go on an claim that it's a movement of an electron, then really it's not. It's a change i a wave function.
Of course, in General Relativity, time is just one of the four dimensions of space-time.
@@TheEulerID I don't understand physics. But you said "particular transition frequency of a casesium-133 atom", you measured that, not time
Thank you reddit! Up until today I had no idea this channel exists!
James May ftw
Very imformative, amazing video.
3:53 for the answer.
That was amazing!
I just subscribed because James asked to me in a very nice way :)
I love James May
Thank you sir!
They are the standard Speedline that come on the Corrado VR6. Not sure if they make them anymore but a close equivalent would be a Compomotive MO.
James May is Awesome, and People who dislike him go away
NOW!!!!!!
My brain died.
2:00 cue the doctor who theme.
+Ben Hobbs Yeah they've gotten progressively worse since Tennant's one.
+xliam127x dunununudununuudunununudununudununundununudununn woooooweeeeeeoooo weeeeeeooooo
Yeah Eccleston and Tennant had the worst vortex. They were atrociously bad. Matt's second one was amazing, Capaldi's is great.
Also the time is relative it can vary depending on the speed and the gravity
2:00 Honestly thought the Doctor Who theme was gonna kick in...
I'm currently struggling to acknowledge what he's saying because my head has started singing "duh-duh-duh-dum, oohwa ooh..."
Excellent thank you
Since the speed of light is invariant (i.e. always measured to be the same in all situations) it is defined to be an exact number (299792458meters per second) and hence the meter and second are defined from this to make sure this number is exact.
According to my girlfriend 1 second is equivalent to approximately 5-10 minutes.
I remember having a gf
I get it lol
@@GS-kj6ur me too
For my BF its 60 minutes of Xbox
Very interesting.
@0:40 is a room thermostat, not a central heating controller. It most certainly doesn't contain a clock. However, it's oddly marked with numbers, like a thermostatic radiator valve, not using Fahrenheit or Celsius markings.
Head has been squeezed. Thanks.
The hyperfine spectrum of Cesium 133 is used as hyperfine levels have very low energy differences and as such the spectrum is largely different from background radiation and is easily determined from background. And as it is very low energy one period is very small so 1 second can be made very precise.
James.,you should have explored about the time system followed in ancient hinduism..
I LOVE YOU JAMES
would it be easier to define a second as a derivation of the time it takes light to travel some distance?
although i suppose that would be cyclical definitions...a meter depends on seconds light travels, and then a second would depend on the length of a meter
Ryukachoo Congratulations, you've answered your own question.
It's the other way around. A metre is defined by how far light travels in a given unit of time. Thus we define the second first.
What make and model are the rims on your car? They look neat to me.
Good point!
kept spamming 4:31, James does an oh-no-you-didn't...
Thi video deserves so many more views :)
what's the name of the elevator style music at the end with the greenscreen and james?
and now I know.. that I need to watch this again
ohhh right thanks for clearing that up
This is just like "James May's things you need to know about..." series.
Your voice is awsome
heck this was sick
I'll play old May if I can't get to sleep. This one one on a loop should do the trick.
Funny fact is that currently out of all possible measurements, it's time that we do measure with greatest precision and use to define other units.
You're not lost, and you are correct. We use time to measure lots of things, but since time itself is not perfectly measured, it means all calculations with time may be suspect.
However, this poses no problems for humans on the time scale that we live in... perhaps at some sub-atomic level this may be of concern, but otherwise life just moves on and nobody really notices.
I just had to replay the definition of a second over and over.
Thanks. Now I have to look up what the 'period' is and properties of the Cesium 133 atom, for curiosity's sake. (I didn't do well in chemistry.) :)
Just started to wonder if a solar day was much longer (or shorter) than second would also have probobly different lenght. So in general time is something we just agreed to mesure in a particular way but has been sort of made up for our use rather than been observed and measured like gravity or electric current? And scince lots of things are measured using time as a factor everything seems to be relative to it. Im lost here O_O
Great show! Sometimes it is hard to hear what he saying over the loud noises.
Brian yes the sound effects are to loud this was a triple editor
I wish there would have been a bit more explanation of the oscillation of cesium atom and how it defines time.
Our perception of time is technically a physical thing because we're just "counting" however many times an electron does that one thing around cesium 133 (sorry I'm not exactly sure what you would call it)
It has to be measured in a way that other people around the world can replicate it. Simple as that.
So, why was the original catholic calendar decimal, only to have two more months crow-barred in later (July and August), then the weeks counted in 13 weeks per quarter/ (or season?) like a deck of playing cards, the week into 7 days, the day into base-12, twice, the hours into base-60, with the second [-division] also base-60, then to go decimal once again with the stop-watch divisions of a second. What ever happed to the "third"? How many other calendar divisions have there been, please?
very cool
What is one degree of temperature? What is one inch? Not how we determined how to use them. What IS it?
Not to mention that time isn't even constant, it's a different measurement depending on your frame of reference, and it can be affected by gravity.
Well, I for one found it interesting - though I had hoped that James would explain his definition. Perhaps a further minute and a half would have been enough to get the idea behind the caesium clock across.
The defination is
1 second is the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiations corresponding to the transition between 2 hyperfine levels at ground state in sezium-133 atom.
cesium*
and a simpler definition can be
"1 second is the duration in which cesium 133 atom vibrates 9192631770 times"
thank you so much I needed a clearer explanation for my physics homework lol
Hey you're welcome, i'm glad i could be of some help to you, considering what a fail i was in school :P haha ,
+iwantitpaintedblack Caesium*
The hyperfine structure of atoms actually does not have to do with vibration. Because of interactions between the nucleus' spin and the electron's spin, the ground state energy of the electron is very slightly split in two, one energy level having slightly more energy than the other, depending on whether the electron spin is aligned with the nucleus or anti-aligned. The a photon created by an electron transitioning between these two levels has a very specific energy, and thus frequency. Converting this frequency into a period and multiplying by 9192631770 returns one second.
It has to do with the frequency of the radiation emitted whilst Cesium-133 atoms decay. You will recall from high school physics that frequency is the amount of time that it takes for a wave traveling at (nearly) the speed of light to go from peak to peak.
1 second is defined as “9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom
The look on your profile pic makes that comment even more hilarious
Oh yeah, that reminded me tonight is 'Spring forward', ha
Well Sir James....You finally found a subject I can't pay attention to you on.....Decimal points and the square root of TIME.
could you pleas explain the phenomenom of water?
is variable of the solar day make second always the same? sun loosing its energy and orbiting and may be independent -un touch other factor may need to considered as second, its now the day of algorithm.
relation of start of universe /bigbang/ VS SolarDay
means the theory of running of universe VS second
Richard Hammond look at James Legs at 1:44 what he does, I have noticed he does it a lot
The comment in the end cracked me up
I SECOND that...
Did he say "hardish sums"? At 0:30
KEEP JAMES MAY!
The second with James May in it, I believe. But I really think it's a great show, it just sounds a bit stupid (what is one second) but I really enjoy it =)
I knew this already :D
in a way, time is what lies between our conscious thoughts.
thx
One does not simply 'like' James May
Second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.
Anyone notice they capitalized the abbreviation of "FLOPS2 wrong (at 0:23)? They show "FLoating Point Operations per Second" (FLPOS)
Thomas White I bet you are fun at parties :)
Haha! I'm a RIOT! XD
Thomas White
A laugh riot! I didn't know anybody said that anymore. I am so glad they (you) do.
what's the end music? haha
and how long did that take?
3 u james ur awesome...
when during the beeping?
Tapping a sun dial nudges the shadow to centre itself
Hasn't it even more recently defined as the time it takes for light to travel a certain distance?
what exactly is an atomic clock?