One Hundredth of a Second

The BBC website has a video titled 'Discovery of a new fish species.' I thought it was a spoof on Michael P but it's not; they really do seem to have discovered a new species.


Let's examine one one hundredth of a second. In 1988, at the Seoul Games, Adrian Moorhouse won the 100m breaststroke gold by 1/100th. after lying sixth at the 50m. I've watched the video hundreds of times and I still haven't seen him touch first. But he has the gold.

There's a film called One Hundredth of a Second but it's nothing to do with sport.

Light travels 1,156km or 1,860 miles in one one hundredth of a second.

Valerie's shot travels around 11cm.

Ursain Bolt (great name!) travels 10cm.

A relay swimmer travels 5cm off the blocks.

The Twins travel 4.7cm.

A butterfly swimmer travels 1.8cm into the touchpad.

A computer screen refreshes once.

That's how 'long' it takes.

The howstuffworks website defines it as:1 centisecond (one-hundredth of a second) - The length of time it takes for a stroke of lightning to strike.