This article is about the unit of clock time.

For other uses, see Second

(disambiguation).
second
Clock-pendulum.gif
A pendulum-governed escapement of a clock, ticking every second
General information
Unit system SI base unit
Unit of Time
Symbol s
The second (symbol: s, abbreviation: sec) is the base unit of time in the
International System of Units (SI) (French: Système International d’unités),
commonly understood and historically defined as 1⁄86400 of a day – this factor
derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and
finally to 60 seconds each. Analog clocks and watches often have sixty tick marks
on their faces, representing seconds (and minutes), and a "second hand" to mark the
passage of time in seconds. Digital clocks and watches often have a two-digit
seconds counter. The second is also part of several other units of measurement like
meters per second for speed, meters per second per second for acceleration, and
cycles per second for frequency.

Although the historical definition of the unit was based on this division of the
Earth's rotation cycle, the formal definition in the International System of Units
(SI) is a much steadier timekeeper:

The second is defined as being equal to the time duration of 9,192,631,770 periods
of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels
of the fundamental unperturbed ground-state of the caesium-133 atom.[1]

Because the Earth's rotation varies and is also slowing ever so slightly, a leap
second is added at irregular intervals to clock time[nb 1] to keep clocks in sync
with Earth's rotation.