Mid-Week Mini: Jiffy is An Actual Unit of Time
In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we talk about the origin of the word “Jiffy” as it pertains to measuring time.
Did you know that a “jiffy” isn’t just a funny word people throw around when they’re late? It’s actually a real unit of time.
Most of us use “jiffy” in a casual way. “I’ll be back in a jiffy” really just means “I’ll be quick.” But in the early 20th century, scientists decided to get precise. American chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis used the word to describe the time it takes light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum. That’s about 33.3564 picoseconds. That’s not just fast — that’s unimaginably fast.
But depending on who you ask, a jiffy can mean different things. In physics, you’ll often see it defined as one hundredth of a second. In computing, a jiffy is usually one tick of the system clock, which for early computers was often 1/60th of a second. So depending on whether you’re talking to a physicist, a programmer, or a chemist, their “jiffy” might last anywhere from a few milliseconds to a few picoseconds.
And that’s what makes it fun. The next time someone says, “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” technically they could mean they’ll be back in a hundredth of a second… or in about 33 trillionths of a second. Unless they’re The Flash, you’re still going to be waiting longer than that.
So yeah — a jiffy is real. The internet says it’s true.
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