What exactly is one second? | James May's Q&A (Ep 2)

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What exactly is one second? | James May's Q&A (Ep 2) | Head Squeeze

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11 жыл бұрын

James May discusses what exactly a seconds is. He also delves into how time as we know it could have been totally different. This is because the second had many 'rivals' over the years that never got their way.
Outtakes from this video: • What exactly is one se...
James May's Q&A:
With his own unique spin, James May asks and answers the oddball questions that we've all wondered about from 'What exactly is one second?' to 'Is invisibility possible?'
/ headsqueezetv
kzfaq.info_c...

Пікірлер: 628

@HolyKoolaid 4 жыл бұрын

One second is the amount of time it takes to decrease the gain on your SFX using one of Taran's hotkeys.

@joachimtheboss5326 3 жыл бұрын

What is gain?

@faloautz6079 3 жыл бұрын

@@joachimtheboss5326 Watch World's Most Advanced Video Editing Tutorial

@labouclette6010 2 жыл бұрын

ahahah

@JohnPaulBuce 2 жыл бұрын

taran sfx tips

@LoganPrescott Жыл бұрын

hahaha

@Ferodra 5 жыл бұрын

Came here because i heard the sound effects were too loud. Was not disappointed

@0tobsam0 5 жыл бұрын

Taran brought us here @_@

@qrdsn 5 жыл бұрын

@@0tobsam0 same lol

@Oheyson 5 жыл бұрын

@@qrdsn such a #1 amateur mistake :D

@jayco10125 4 жыл бұрын

same

@CineZoneYT 4 жыл бұрын

Same

@bigc6825 8 жыл бұрын

don't ever try to eat a clock, it's very time consuming

@hattrickster33 8 жыл бұрын

I can...second that -_-

@hasoonnine 8 жыл бұрын

+J'zargo lol

@cpjyb 8 жыл бұрын

+J'zargo me two

@lewisirwin5363 7 жыл бұрын

They only have minute nutrition benefits.

@svtirefire 6 жыл бұрын

I hope no one else is going to try their... hand... at chronological humor. Hour patience for that kind of toc is running out.

@RobertBrownieJr 5 жыл бұрын

That's so interesting, the second division of the hour! So simple, never realised that before

@Dani-it5sy 5 жыл бұрын

Only James May can make me watch a 5 min video explaining what a second is.. James you are a genius !!

@theGoogol 5 жыл бұрын

Please turn up the volume of the sound effects ... I can still hear James talking! [/end sarcasm, end video]

@MRdovaful 11 жыл бұрын

I had to pick up pieces of my head after watching this. MIND BLOWN

@mikedymonds 11 жыл бұрын

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

@denizdurdag 11 жыл бұрын

James May, you are a gift to the television.

@didgemanjan 8 жыл бұрын

thank you James. not the usual time losing things I usually come across on KZfaq.

@bman68au 10 жыл бұрын

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"

@Entropy114 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@MrLjdude 11 жыл бұрын

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!

@j.andrews7832 2 жыл бұрын

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.)

@robertgift 8 жыл бұрын

Wonderful, interesting, informative, humorous videos! Thank you.

@The1AngryHistorian 10 жыл бұрын

Thank you Bernard I could not have put that less clearly myself.

@victorengland899 10 жыл бұрын

I'm impressed by the amount of physicists that came out here to have a say.

@Pauldjreadman 8 жыл бұрын

Great series. I just come across it. I love information :)

@kevinkuka6026 11 жыл бұрын

Fascinating James may you are amazing and I love airships to!

@derangedband 11 жыл бұрын

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 :)

@Nicoder6884 8 жыл бұрын

A second is exactly one two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth of the length of this video

@Formatic8 11 жыл бұрын

Only James May can explain what a second is in 278 seconds... class

@AstoJim 11 жыл бұрын

James May keep up the good work!

@vlenhoff 11 жыл бұрын

I love James May

@GO4Evar 11 жыл бұрын

Excellent thank you

@warlac54 11 жыл бұрын

Very imformative, amazing video.

@ultraali453 11 ай бұрын

Thank you sir!

@loudsoundman 11 жыл бұрын

That was amazing!

@robloxzhu9329 11 жыл бұрын

James May is Awesome, and People who dislike him go away NOW!!!!!!

@TheKaneDestroyer 11 жыл бұрын

Very interesting.

@HAMTechOficial 11 жыл бұрын

I just subscribed because James asked to me in a very nice way :)

@mikechamberlain4503 10 жыл бұрын

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!

@trevorhelton6552 6 жыл бұрын

Exactly!

@TheEulerID 5 жыл бұрын

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 4 жыл бұрын

@@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

@TheEulerID 4 жыл бұрын

@@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.

@armanrozika 4 жыл бұрын

@@TheEulerID I don't understand physics. But you said "particular transition frequency of a casesium-133 atom", you measured that, not time

@MadeinHell2 11 жыл бұрын

Thank you reddit! Up until today I had no idea this channel exists! James May ftw

@SteveColen 11 жыл бұрын

Head has been squeezed. Thanks.

@theowilkinson8802 11 жыл бұрын

I LOVE YOU JAMES

@jobsinphiladelphia 11 жыл бұрын

Good point!

@cklsynt 11 жыл бұрын

@LESLEYYY0 8 жыл бұрын

3:53 for the answer.

@TheEulerID 5 жыл бұрын

@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.

@Samael78 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@zolifer1 11 жыл бұрын

Your voice is awsome

@Tmoblization1 11 жыл бұрын

heck this was sick

@garybenade 2 жыл бұрын

and now I know.. that I need to watch this again

@ohaidare 11 жыл бұрын

ohhh right thanks for clearing that up

@TheFib98 11 жыл бұрын

I just had to replay the definition of a second over and over.

@DevilboyScooby 8 жыл бұрын

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..."

@RangerHouston 6 жыл бұрын

According to my girlfriend 1 second is equivalent to approximately 5-10 minutes.

@GS-kj6ur 5 жыл бұрын

I remember having a gf

@jayco10125 4 жыл бұрын

I get it lol

@permonjackson9696 4 жыл бұрын

@@GS-kj6ur me too

@rebeccaanderson5626 3 жыл бұрын

For my BF its 60 minutes of Xbox

@BlueCosmology 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@Elec-DIY 11 жыл бұрын

Also the time is relative it can vary depending on the speed and the gravity

@rohitbhat4660 8 жыл бұрын

James.,you should have explored about the time system followed in ancient hinduism..

@FLIGHTCOMPANY 10 жыл бұрын

My brain died.

@jonjames8981 9 жыл бұрын

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)

@GabCas 10 жыл бұрын

It has to be measured in a way that other people around the world can replicate it. Simple as that.

@Ryukachoo 7 жыл бұрын

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

@Vengir 7 жыл бұрын

Ryukachoo Congratulations, you've answered your own question.

@TheEulerID 5 жыл бұрын

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.

@julienolan5773 10 жыл бұрын

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.

11 жыл бұрын

Thi video deserves so many more views :)

@anawsompizza 11 жыл бұрын

What make and model are the rims on your car? They look neat to me.

@01322521959 6 жыл бұрын

I'll play old May if I can't get to sleep. This one one on a loop should do the trick.

@devinkindt2306 10 жыл бұрын

very cool

@BlueCosmology 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@mander40101 5 жыл бұрын

What is one degree of temperature? What is one inch? Not how we determined how to use them. What IS it?

@ChungYungYeng 11 жыл бұрын

KEEP JAMES MAY!

@Joseph-C 11 жыл бұрын

Oh yeah, that reminded me tonight is 'Spring forward', ha

@eljay8672 8 жыл бұрын

2:00 cue the doctor who theme.

@SuperEpicJake 8 жыл бұрын

+Ben Hobbs Yeah they've gotten progressively worse since Tennant's one.

@Eeeeeric416 8 жыл бұрын

+xliam127x dunununudununuudunununudununudununundununudununn woooooweeeeeeoooo weeeeeeooooo

@AuroraNora3 7 жыл бұрын

Yeah Eccleston and Tennant had the worst vortex. They were atrociously bad. Matt's second one was amazing, Capaldi's is great.

@MrKDilkington0 11 жыл бұрын

This is just like "James May's things you need to know about..." series.

@gayleclanton3311 5 жыл бұрын

Well Sir James....You finally found a subject I can't pay attention to you on.....Decimal points and the square root of TIME.

@DevilboyScooby 8 жыл бұрын

kept spamming 4:31, James does an oh-no-you-didn't...

@MelindadelosSantos 11 жыл бұрын

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.) :)

@bridgetospring2829 10 жыл бұрын

Great show! Sometimes it is hard to hear what he saying over the loud noises.

@CineZoneYT 4 жыл бұрын

Brian yes the sound effects are to loud this was a triple editor

@SariAlShammari 7 жыл бұрын

The comment in the end cracked me up

@JohnSmith-tm5xx 7 жыл бұрын

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.

@QueenFondue 11 жыл бұрын

I SECOND that...

@davebar96 11 жыл бұрын

The look on your profile pic makes that comment even more hilarious

@ats7485 6 жыл бұрын

I wish there would have been a bit more explanation of the oscillation of cesium atom and how it defines time.

@TheUpperHead 11 жыл бұрын

what's the name of the elevator style music at the end with the greenscreen and james?

@1Horode 11 жыл бұрын

I knew this already :D

@fadyadam100 11 жыл бұрын

3 u james ur awesome...

@maxhill9254 4 жыл бұрын

thx

@Del350K4 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@krzysztofmazurkiewicz5270 10 жыл бұрын

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

@nikkukumar856 3 жыл бұрын

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

@TheHennotaams 11 жыл бұрын

could you pleas explain the phenomenom of water?

@chrishartman8182 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@KomalSandhu 8 жыл бұрын

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.

@iwantitpaintedblack 8 жыл бұрын

cesium* and a simpler definition can be "1 second is the duration in which cesium 133 atom vibrates 9192631770 times"

@adrianaselena14 7 жыл бұрын

thank you so much I needed a clearer explanation for my physics homework lol

@iwantitpaintedblack 7 жыл бұрын

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 ,

@typo691 7 жыл бұрын

+iwantitpaintedblack Caesium*

@markmccarthy8336 7 жыл бұрын

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.

@neolandes 11 жыл бұрын

The TopGear sounds editor is here to amuse us (it seems).

@dakduif100 11 жыл бұрын

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 =)

@33fgfhjjggy6y 11 жыл бұрын

One does not simply 'like' James May

@xxMrBaldyxx 8 жыл бұрын

in a way, time is what lies between our conscious thoughts.

@Ph4n_t0m 9 жыл бұрын

Anyone notice they capitalized the abbreviation of "FLOPS2 wrong (at 0:23)? They show "FLoating Point Operations per Second" (FLPOS)

@Lolloz89 9 жыл бұрын

Thomas White I bet you are fun at parties :)

@Ph4n_t0m 9 жыл бұрын

Haha! I'm a RIOT! XD

@kerrydennehy 9 жыл бұрын

Thomas White A laugh riot! I didn't know anybody said that anymore. I am so glad they (you) do.

@goodvibrato 11 жыл бұрын

and how long did that take?

@philipadastra 10 жыл бұрын

James May is the shit! :D

@TheFootballboy10 11 жыл бұрын

Richard Hammond look at James Legs at 1:44 what he does, I have noticed he does it a lot

@amidamaru0086 11 жыл бұрын

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.

@fergusmccarthy7736 10 жыл бұрын

what exactly is an atomic clock?

@johningram2153 4 жыл бұрын

Did he say "hardish sums"? At 0:30

@DasaLetsPlay 5 жыл бұрын

3:54 Its funny that I actually had to learn this in school

@TurboTelytJim 11 жыл бұрын

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?

@stephensomersify 5 жыл бұрын

Tapping a sun dial nudges the shadow to centre itself

@appy96 8 жыл бұрын

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

@appy96 8 жыл бұрын

means the theory of running of universe VS second