For us humans, the thousandth of a second is nothing from the angle of time. Time intervals of this order have only started to crop up in some of our practical work. When people used to reckon the time according to the sun's position in the sky, or to the length of a shadow, they paid no heed to minutes, considering them even unworthy position of the sun, and by the length of a shadow of measurement. The tenor of life in ancient times was so unhurried that the timepieces of the day the sun-dials, sand-glasses and the like had no special divisions for minutes. The minute hand first appeared only in the early 18th century, while the second sweep came into use a mere 150 years ago.
But back to our thousandth of a second. What do you think could happen in this space of time? Very much, indeed I True, an ordinary train would cover only some 3 cm. But sound would already fly 33 cm and a plane half a metre. In its orbital movement around the sun, the earth would travel 30 metres. Light would cover the great distance of 300 km. The minute organisms around us wouldn't think the thousandth of a second so negligible an amount of time if they could think of course. For insects it is quite a tangible interval. In the space of a second a mosquito flaps its wings 500 to 600 times. Consequently in the space of a thousandth of a second, it would manage either to raise its wings or lower them
We can't move our limbs as fast as insects. The fastest thing we can do is to blink our eyelids. This takes place so quickly that we fail even to notice the transient obscurement of our field of vision. Few know, though, that this movement, "in the twinkling of an eye" which has become synonymous for incredible rapidity is quite slow if measured in thousandths of a second. A full "twinkling of an eye" averages as exact measurement has disclosed two- fifths of a second, which gives us 400 thousandths of a second. This process can be divided into the following stages: firstly, the dropping of the eyelid which takes 75-90 thousandths of a second; secondly, the closed eyelid in a state of rest, which takes up 130-170 thousandths; and, thirdly, the raising of the eyelid, which takes about 170 thousandths.
As you see, this one "twinkling of an eye" is quite a considerable time interval, during which the eyelid even manages to take a rest. If we could photograph mentally impressions lasting the thousandth of a second, we would catch in the u twinkling of an eye'* two smooth motions of the eyelid, separated by a period during which the eyelid would be at rest.
Generally speaking, the ability to do such a thing would completely transform the picture we get of the world around us and we would see the odd and curious things that H. G. Wells described in his New Accelerator. This story relates of a man who drank a queer mixture which caused him to see rapid motions as a series of separate static phenomena.
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