Time

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 Time

The usual symbol for time is small letter ‘t’.

The following instruments are used for measuring time:
• Stopwatch (for very small time intervals)
• Wrist watch
• Hour glass
• Atomic clock (highly accurate measurements)
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 Units of time

• Millisecond (ms)
• Second (s)
• Minute (min)
• Hour (h)
• Days (d)

The SI unit is the second. In calculations, many times you

will need to change to seconds.
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 Unit conversion

÷ 1000 ÷ 60 ÷ 60

ms s min h

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 Pendulum

• A pendulum in the laboratory is made up of a heavy

metal bob attached to one end of a string.
• When the pendulum is suspended from the free end of
the string, it can swing back and forth when you pull it to
one side and release it.
• An oscillation is a to and fro movement, that is when the
pendulum swings back and forth once
• The time for one complete oscillation is called a period
(T).
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 SMALL INTERVALS OF TIME

Small time intervals which last less than 1 second can be

measured accurately by:
• measuring the duration of multiples of the interval and then
• dividing the duration by the number of multiples

The technique described above divides errors over a number of

intervals hence the answer obtained after dividing will have a
small error.

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SMALL INTERVALS OF TIME cont.

Example
The period of a pendulum can be determined more accurately
by:
• Measuring the time the pendulum takes to complete 10
oscillations/cycles and then
• Dividing the time by 10.
Greater accuracy can be achieved by repeating the 2 steps above
to get another value of the period. After that, the average of the
2 periods is calculated.

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 More precautions when measuring
the period of a pendulum
• One precaution which must be taken when using a
stopwatch is to reset it before you start timing.
• Use a marker (can be your thumb) to show the
position where an oscillation starts and ends.
• Use a different stopwatch to check if you will get
similar results.

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 Human reaction time
• Humans take some time, which is usually very small, to respond
to an event.
• When measuring the period of a pendulum with a stopwatch,
you may start the stopwatch too early or too late due to human
reaction time. This reaction time will introduce error in your
measurement.
• However, when you time 10 or 20 oscillations and divide the
time you get by 10 or 20, the reaction error will also be divided
so your final answer for the period will have a small error.
• If you were to time just one oscillation, the reaction time will
cause a significant error to your reading.