In a Jiffy

Nov 18, 2019 | Hinsdale

Did you know that a "jiffy" is an actual measurement of time? According to ScienceFocus, "For physicists, a jiffy is how long light takes to travel a distance of one femtometre, which is a millionth of a millionth of a millimetre. That means that there are about three hundred thousand billion billion jiffys in a second. A jiffy also has an electrical meaning. It is the length of a single cycle of alternating current. In the UK’s 50Hz system, a jiffy is thus one-fiftieth of a second."

Physical chemist Gilbert Newton Lewis is the person credited with coining the term. 

He defined 1 jiffy as equal to the time it takes light to travel one centimeter.

(a) If you perform a task in a jiffy, how long has it taken in seconds?

(b) How many jiffys are in one minute?