Most people have heard or used the phrase,"In a jiffy" thinking it was an abstract way of saying they were almost ready without knowing that a jiffy is an actual measurement in fact it can be used to measure different things. A physical chemist defined jiffy as the length of time it takes for light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum. Physicists define jiffy as the time it takes light to travel one femtometer which is one millionth of a millionth of a millimeter. But wait there's more! An electrical engineer would describe a jiffy as the time it takes for a single cycle of alternating current,about 1/50 or 1/60 of a second depending on the electrical system. Who knew?
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