Jiffy
Jiffy turns up in 2 fields: electrotechnology, units. Here is what it means to the people in each one.
Jiffy in electrotechnology
The duration of a single alternating current power cycle.
A unit of time equal to one complete cycle of alternating current. In a 60 hertz power system, a jiffy is exactly 1/60th of a second, while in a 50 hertz system it is 1/50th of a second. Engineers and technicians use it as an informal reference for the shortest practical time increment in AC power timing, especially when discussing fault clearance or relay operation speeds.
"The breaker needs to clear that fault in a couple of jiffies or we risk losing the whole bus."
jiffy in units
An informal unit of extremely brief time, varying by technical discipline.
An informal unit of time used across various technical fields to denote an extremely brief duration. In computer engineering, it typically refers to the duration of one system timer tick, often 10 milliseconds. In quantum physics, it represents the time light takes to travel a fermi, roughly the diameter of a nucleon. It serves as a placeholder for the smallest practical time increment in a given system.
"The process scheduler allocates CPU time in 10-millisecond jiffies."