
132
MELTING POINT
BOILING POINT
DENSITY
Have you ever wondered why one second is
one second long? Earth’s rotational speed
was used until 1967, when the General Con-
ference on Weights and Measures decided
that the second should be further defined.
This is when cesium came into the picture.
Now the second is a multiple of the period
of cesium’s electromagnetic wave. Atomic
clocks based on this measurement miss only
one second every 1.4 milli