Second sound travels about 343 meters in one second in air; light takes 1.3 seconds to reach Earth from the surface of the Moon, a distance of 384,400 kilometers. A second is part of other units, such as frequency measured in hertz (inverse seconds or second), speed (meters per second) and acceleration (meters per second squared). The metric system unit becquerel, a measure of radioactive decay, is measured in inverse seconds. The meter is defined in terms of the speed of light and the second; definitions of the metric base units ampere and candela also depend on the second. Of the
Unit of time Most of the other units used are multiples or divisions of these three. The graphic also shows the three heavenly bodies whose orbital parameters relate to the units of time. Unit of time A unit of time or time unit is any particular time interval, used as a standard way of measuring or expressing duration. The base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), and by extension most of the Western world, is the second, defined as about 9 billion oscillations of the caesium atom. The exact modern definition, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology