Talk:Second/Archive 2

BOLDed, Reverted, and now time to Discuss the recent changes and changes of changes to this article
ADD: DAMMIT I WAS NOT LOGGED IN!!!!! Please see signature, last anon IP edit was mine! mike4ty4 (talk) 09:04, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi.

I am posting this because there now seems to be some back-and-forth starting between this poster and another one here, User:Sbalfour, regarding the content of this particular article. In particular, the other poster made some rather sweeping changes that seemed to have the effect of dethroning the SI definition of the second in favor of some general notion of "clock time", and then I thought some of the points were valid - in particular User:Sbalfour wanted to make it more accessible which is commendable, but at the same time it seemed to change the focus away from the SI which today forms the generally-accepted standard as to what "a second" is, and modern clocks are made based to tick SI seconds, since they are based on variously either synchronization to the atomic clock (which ticks such seconds or the best realization we have thereof), or a quartz oscillator calibrated to the SI definition (unless you have some sources explaining that the oscillators of modern clocks are commonly set to some other interval in which case you should present such here) within its range of accuracy. I then re-edited it to bring back the SI focus but without trying to compromise the new information brought in. In general I do think that some WP articles can get too technical, and I'd also like to try for a similar remake of articles like about the metre, for example, which does not give a lot of intuition for what exactly that distance is and while that may be a common thing to like 95% of the World population or so, there is some 5% at least who does not know it and is disproportionately concentrated in the Anglosphere to which this encyclopedia, being English, would be most primarily well-received in (although those from other nations who speak English due to its prominence as a second language can also avail themselves of it, of course.). I think it's pretty uncontroversial that the second as a unit is the SI base unit for time, and it's what almost all clocks manufactured now tick in. To me, saying the "second is an interval of clock time" is like saying a "metre is the length of a metre stick". That's true, but it's defining it by something which is based on how it is defined.

So I'd like to bring it here for discussion. To start that I left another very minimal revert edit limited to the lead sentence only restoring that it is the SI base unit of time and am offering to hear from User:Sbalfour his objections to this. mike4ty4 (talk) 09:04, 31 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I gave the definition of second as stated in the lead to my nephew who has a degree in the sciences from a prominent university. He immediately asked "What's the SI?" I asked him if he knew what SI stands for, and he stalled, then tentatively answered "Silicon?" Hmmmmm..... So I asked him what are base units? And he replied, "base units of what?" It wouldn't do any good to say "the SI", since he already doesn't know what that is. So I asked him how ordinary things are measured.  And he replied somewhat quizically, "pounds, feet, inches, ounces,...".  I also asked him about atomic clocks.  He pointed out that his swim meet timers were accurate to 1/1000 second and probably atomic clocks were more accurate, but weren't the pool timers pretty good? I carefully questioned him about what a second was, and about the rotation of the earth. He knew a day was 24 hours and an hour was 60 minutes and a minute 60 seconds.  He did the multiplication immediately and stated that a day was 86,400 seconds. I asked him if a day was EXACTLY 86,400 seconds and he seemed confused, as if I was asking him to check his math. He eventually stated that it was the definition of a day, i.e. 24 hours of 60 minutes, and etc.  I asked him about leap seconds, and he said they were like leap years and Feb.29.s and skipping leap years every 100 years, and etc. to fix clocks and calendars to agree with the sun and the earth. Hmmmmmmm.... I asked him how he knew his clock was setting the right time, and he replied, the internet tells the correct time.  And I asked him how the internet sets its time, and he replied after some thinking, Greenwich Mean time?  That's not a bad answer, actually.  Most Americans do not have a college degree. Most Americans do not have so much knowledge of time as my nephew.  Bank on it.  The time, and second they know is the clock on the wall.
 * We need to be very careful what we think accessibility is. We cannot use terms like SI and "base unit" in the opening sentence of an article about an every day object, like "mouse", "baseball" or "second".  Even if we expanded the cryptic "SI" to "International System of Units" (my nephew didn't know what those were, either), it's still useless. The 2nd paragraph states prominently that the second is the metric system unit of time.  The opening sentence is duplicative, and should say something else.  It says: The second is the SI base unit of time, equal to 1/60th minute, which is 1/60th hour, which is 1/24th day; that's NOT true: an SI second is NOT 1/86,400 of the day. The statement cannot remain. Sbalfour (talk) 04:24, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I find that rather odd because it's common in all the sources I've used. On my desk I have Hill and Petrucci's General Chemistry and in the very first chapter on measurement units it mentions that the system used is called the International System of Units, or SI. I also have Kleppner and Kolenkow's Introduction to Mechanics and the name of the SI is mentioned there as well. And these aren't obscure sources but rather introductory-level texts; Gen Chem is fairly typical par for a University introductory course in its subject, K&K is a bit more high-calibre text for physics aimed at a more mathematically well-prepared student or for a later course in the subject (was not used at my University, I got it myself for self studies, but is used at MIT.). That's about two hard science references that feature it and I know many more exist. Though I suppose of course some tidbits can escape one. However, for Wikipedia, the prevailing convention almost always seems to be to mention the system of units to which a unit belongs. The metre is called an SI unit in its article; why can't the second be called as such? On "Inch" it is said that "The inch (abbreviation: in or ″) is a unit of length in the (British) imperial and United States customary systems of measurement ... " I would wonder how many Americans know that the system of American units is called the "United States customary system", versus just "you know, miles and all that stuff". Someone reading that, if they did not know what the "United States customary system" was might not get that, or maybe now they'd know what it is. Regarding your other points, the sentence as it stands as of this writing was not the one I originally had because you had reverted those changes - the original one I put there said "_notionally_ equal to...", which is a key distinction. When reverting back I thought I'd start with the _minimum_ of reverted changes so as to avoid getting an edit war going and to test the waters. Given your concerns I nudged it forward now to hopefully make it more accurate, and also closer in spirit to what I had there originally. mike4ty4 (talk) 15:26, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Words like "conceptually", "intuitively", "notionally" and even "historically" are all waffle words. The 'mouse' in my backyard isn't a 'conceptual mouse', and a baseball thrown out on the field isn't a 'conceptual baseball'.  The clock on my wall isn't a 'conceptual clock' and the second hand "ticks" seconds I can count.  I don't need to know anything about atomic clocks (2 mentions in the lead?) or SI seconds (also twice named in the lead) to set my watch. The way this is written wouldn't pass muster in a college composition.
 * I'm sure if I asked my coach whether the timers we use tick SI seconds or clock seconds (i.e. 1/86,400 of a day) he'd be confounded. The timer isn't actually a time-of-day clock, it just ticks seconds. So which are they?  We don't need to know - the timer isn't accurate enough to tell the difference, nor are most clocks.  My original text stated that the second is a unit of the metric system (i.e. SI) in the second paragraph.  It was covered. I did consult Encyclopedia Britannica, Webster's Third New International Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary. Their brief definitions of second did not mention the SI or metric system in the opening sentence/paragraph. I'm in the United State; we don't use the metric system here, and we still have seconds.
 * I do find your effort to reach a compromise exemplary, and I'm not going to enter into a conflict, i.e. an edit war, so we have to resolve the issue here. Sbalfour (talk) 19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank your for your kind words. I would like to say that I really do appreciate you trying to make the articles more readable and comprehensible - that is something that is sadly lacking in a great many articles on the WP especially about technical subjects (and while timekeeping and measurements are common, everyday items, they are nonetheless very technical at heart in how they are conceptualized, defined, understood, constructed and used.). Bravo, good sir, bravo. The only thing I see is that to me I don't think we necessarily have to compromise all the "technical" aspects if they are properly measured out. Regarding your other points, you say that a timer is not accurate enough to actually determine if it truly and exactly follows an SI second and for that I'd actually say no timekeeper in the world will _exactly_ follow one, not even the atomic clock itself, because they're all approximate and imperfect in their construction. They also don't follow "1/86400 day" seconds either for the same reason. In like manner it's probably going to be that actual metre sticks are going to very "significantly" (when considering the standards of scientific work) from a true metre as defined by the SI's lightspeed definition, which itself differs from the earlier definitions. They could be made according to the Equator and North Pole definition too and you'd be none the wiser though I'd find that doubtful unless you can provide some evidence it's actually going on, viz. the same with clocks and timers. But an article should not be about any particular and imperfect artifact used to provide a usable realization of the unit in which case you'd need countless articles, but rather about the unit itself as it is understood as a concept, independent of any particular physical realization. You say there's no "conceptual" definition, that this is not a good word, okay, but then what would you suggest that is better? There needs to be a distinction between the way a common person relates to a second (as the fraction of a day) and its technical definition in the SI standard, while at the same time not negating either and moreover the understanding it is a standard unit. And furthermore the SI standard definition was designed to mimic the fraction-of-day one just as the metre definition was made to mimic earlier definitions perhaps (though there is some contest on this) ultimately going back to the original definition of John Wilkins, FRS and others that it should be based on the length of a pendulum that takes one second to do one swing in Earth gravity, and thus drive an escapement forward one second per tick - see here: https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0412078, a paper titled "Why does the metre beat the second?". Perhaps maybe "originally defined and commonly understood as" would work? I just did another change :) mike4ty4 (talk) 03:57, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi
"The phrase "One Mississippi, Two Mississippi" is one of several similar phrases used to measure time verbally."

Why is this in this article? And if it is to be kept in, should it not at least note that it is a way of measuring seconds, not just time? GeneCallahan (talk) 23:41, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It should be included because it's a handy way to calculate the distance of lightning strikes (although I learned it as "One One-Thousand... Two One-Thousand...). Which not only raises the question of which phrase is the most chronologically accurate, but what such phrases are in other languages. There's a thunderstorm in France; what do you say? kencf0618 (talk) 18:14, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Neglected 2nd meaning
The article currently neglects a second meaning of second: The period of time (i.e., the set of all instants) between two fixed instants of time, being fixed by UTC. For example, "the first second of a day" refers to the period of time beginning at a certain instant (the beginning of a day) and lasting 1s (duration). Johannes Simon 2006-02-25 14:10 (UTC)


 * You seem to be talking in circles--you're defining "second" by using the word "second". Can you explain it more clearly? TL The Legend (talk) 03:46, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Multiples
Please don't remove multiples, for consistency they are in all seven base SI units.


 * Who is this? TL The Legend (talk) 03:46, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Trivia
Removed the bit on pi*1E7 being within 0.5% of the number of seconds in a Julian year. Pi isn't related to the length of the year and it's just a coincidence. pi*10 is approximately equal to the length of the month of January. Shall we have that too?


 * Who is this? Also, you're being very subjective. TL The Legend (talk) 03:46, 22 November 2018 (UTC)