Shake
Exactly 10 nanoseconds. Coined at the Manhattan Project for nuclear chain reactions, from the phrase 'two shakes of a lamb's tail'.
1 shake = 1×10⁻⁸ seconds (exactly).
About the shake
Physicists on the wartime Manhattan Project needed a handy name for an interval that kept turning up in their chain-reaction calculations, and they settled on the shake. It is defined as 10 nanoseconds, or 10 to the power of minus 8 second. The name plays on the English idiom about something happening in two shakes of a lamb's tail, meaning very quickly.
One step of a fission chain, in which a neutron causes a fission that releases more neutrons, takes roughly one shake, and a whole reaction is typically over within 50 to 100 shakes, according to Wikipedia. The shake was coined in the same circle and for similar reasons as the barn, a unit of cross-sectional area. It is an informal metric unit rather than an SI unit. A shake equals 10,000 picoseconds, and 100 million shakes make one second.
Sources: Wikipedia: Shake (unit); Wikipedia: Picosecond
Shake conversion chart
1 shake expressed in every other time unit:
| Unit | 1 shake |
|---|---|
| Seconds | 1×10⁻⁸ |
| Minutes | 1.666666667×10⁻¹⁰ |
| Hours | 2.777777778×10⁻¹² |
| Days | 1.157407407×10⁻¹³ |
| Weeks | 1.653439153×10⁻¹⁴ |
| Months | 3.802648621×10⁻¹⁵ |
| Years | 3.168873851×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Milliseconds | 0.00001 |
| Microseconds | 0.01 |
| Nanoseconds | 10 |
| Decades | 3.168873851×10⁻¹⁷ |
| Centuries | 3.168873851×10⁻¹⁸ |
| Millennia | 3.168873851×10⁻¹⁹ |
| Picoseconds | 10,000 |
| Common Years | 3.170979198×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Leap Years | 3.162315321×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Julian Years | 3.168808781×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Tropical Years | 3.16887654×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Sidereal Years | 3.168753579×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Synodic Months | 3.919350773×10⁻¹⁵ |
| Sidereal Days | 1.160576284×10⁻¹³ |
| Aeons | 3.168873851×10⁻²⁵ |
| Fortnights | 8.267195767×10⁻¹⁵ |
| Score | 1.584436925×10⁻¹⁷ |
| Lustra | 6.337747701×10⁻¹⁷ |
| Olympiads | 7.922184627×10⁻¹⁷ |
| Indictions | 2.112582567×10⁻¹⁷ |
| Jubilees | 6.337747701×10⁻¹⁸ |
| Ghati | 6.944444444×10⁻¹² |
| Muhurtas | 3.472222222×10⁻¹² |
| Prahar | 9.259259259×10⁻¹³ |
| Shichen | 1.388888889×10⁻¹² |
| Moments | 1.111111111×10⁻¹⁰ |
| Ship's Watches | 6.944444444×10⁻¹³ |
| Kin (Maya) | 1.157407407×10⁻¹³ |
| Winals | 5.787037037×10⁻¹⁵ |
| Tun (Maya) | 3.215020576×10⁻¹⁶ |
| Katuns | 1.607510288×10⁻¹⁷ |
| Baktuns | 8.03755144×10⁻¹⁹ |
More Scientific units
- picosecond (time)
- femtometer (length)
- angstrom (length)
- dalton (weight & mass)
- cubic kilometer (volume)
- barn (area)
- degree Rankine (temperature)
- degree Newton (temperature)
- Mach (speed)
- speed of light (speed)
- kilometer per second (speed)
- calorie (energy)
- kilocalorie (energy)
- electronvolt (energy)
- kiloelectronvolt (energy)
- megaelectronvolt (energy)
Browse all time units.