Some Obscurish facts
#1008
'Jiffy' is an interesting word. Here is a comprehensive exploration of the concept: n.
1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your computer . Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. 'The swapper runs every 6 jiffies' means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second.
2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond wall time interval.
3. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use 'jiffy' to mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to a nanosecond .
4. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. 'I'll do it in a jiffy' means certainly not now and possibly never.
'Jiffy' is an interesting word. Here is a comprehensive exploration of the concept: n.
1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your computer . Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. 'The swapper runs every 6 jiffies' means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second.
2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond wall time interval.
3. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use 'jiffy' to mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to a nanosecond .
4. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. 'I'll do it in a jiffy' means certainly not now and possibly never.