This section is from the book "Scientific American Reference Book. A Manual for the Office, Household and Shop", by Albert A. Hopkins, A. Russell Bond. Also available from Amazon: Scientific American Reference Book.
The unit of time measurement is the same among all nations. Practically it is 1/86400 of the mean solar day, but really it is a perfectly arbitrary unit, as the length of the mean solar day is not constant for any two periods of time. There is no constant natural unit of time.
1 minute | = | 60 seconds. |
1 hour | = | 60 minutes, 3600 seconds. |
1 day | = | 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. |
1 sidereal day | = | 86164.1 seconds. |
1 sidereal month | = | 27.321661 mean solar days (average). |
1 lunar month | = | 29.530589 mean solar days (average). |
1 anomalistic month | = | 27.544600 mean solar |
days (average). |
1 tropical month | = | 27.321582 mean solar days (average). |
1 nodical month | = | 27.212222 mean solar days (average). |
Mean solar year | 365 d. 5 h. 48 m. 46.045 s. with annual variation of 0.00539. |
The change in the length of the mean sidereal day, i.e.. of the time of the earth's rotation upon its axis, amounts to 0.01252 s. in 2400 mean solar years.
- Physical Tables.
 
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