Picosecond
SI unit of time equal to one trillionth of a second or 1/1,000th of a nanosecond
A picosecond is a standard unit of measuring time. It is equal to 10−12 of a second. It is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000000000001 seconds.
One picosecond contains 1000 femtoseconds. There are 1000 picoseconds in one nanosecond.
- Notation
- 10-10 seconds is 100 picoseconds.
- 10-9 seconds is 1 nanosecond.
- Examples
- One picosecond is the half-life of a bottom quark.
- Ten picoseconds after the Big Bang, electromagnetism became its own force.
- It takes light about 3.3 picoseconds to travel one millimeter.
- It takes a common 3.0-gigahertz computer 3.3 × 100 picoseconds to add two integers together.
