What exactly is a jiffy?

Answer 1

Answer

The term has several different meanings depending on context:

• Some people use it to mean a very short time, usually with arbitrary and undefined value.
• In electronics, a jiffy is the time between cycles of alternating current, 1/50 or 1/60 seconds for most countries (the inverse of the frequency).
• In physics, a jiffy is the time taken for light to travel a set distance; one definition is the distance of one fermi, 10-15 metres. Here a jiffy is around 3 x 10-29 seconds. It is also used to mean the Planck time, which is the time light takes to travel one Planck length.
• In computing, a jiffy is the duration of one tick in the system timer interrupter. Most jiiffys/jiffies here would be between 1 and 10 milliseconds (milli- is one thousandth).
• Many people also believe that it is one centisecond (centi- means one hundredth), and use it as such.