Millisecond

A millisecond (from milli- and second; symbol: ms) is a unit of time in the International System of Units. It equals one thousandth (0.001 or 10⁻³ or ¹/₁₀₀₀) of a second, or 1000 microseconds. To put this into perspective, a millisecond is to one second what one second is to about 16.67 minutes.

Although we often think of time in seconds or minutes, many modern technologies rely on measurements as small as milliseconds. For example, computers, smartphones, and high-speed cameras all function and record events using milliseconds because they need to respond or capture moments that happen very quickly.

While there are units for 10 milliseconds (called a centisecond) and 100 milliseconds (called a decisecond), these names are rarely used in everyday language or science. This article will explore times between 10⁻³ seconds and 10⁰ seconds (from 1 milli to one second) to help understand just how short a millisecond really is. For more information, see also times of other orders of magnitude and Other orders of magnitude of time.

Examples

The Apollo Guidance Computer used metric units, with centiseconds for time.

Here are some things that happen in milliseconds:

• 1 ms – time for light to travel about 34 cm or for a typical camera flash
• 1–5 ms – response time of high-end computer screens
• 3 ms – a housefly’s wing flap
• 5–80 ms – a hummingbird’s wing flap
• 8 ms – 1/125 of a second, a common camera shutter speed
• 10 ms – a "jiffy," a basic time unit in computing
• 16.67 ms – time for one cycle of 60 Hz electricity
• 20 ms – cycle time for 50 Hz electricity
• 50 ms – time between gear changes in some sports cars
• 100 ms – typical delay in internet connections for online games
• 150 ms – recommended maximum delay for telephone service
• 200 ms – time for the brain to recognize emotions in faces
• 400 ms – time for the fastest baseball pitches to reach home plate
• 500 ms – an eighth note in music
• 1000 ms – one second, the period of a 1 Hz oscillator
• 86,400,000 ms – one day
• 604,800,000 ms – one week
• 31,556,925,974.7 ms – one year