Human timescales - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This is a table of time

Time

Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

periods

Frequency

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...

relevant to human beings.

0.1 to 0.2 s:

0.1 reaction time, blinking
0.15 seconds—recommended maximum time delay for telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

service

0.2 to 1 s

0.2 to 0.67 seconds—a beat
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

of modern dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
average reading or talking speed 120 word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...

s/min is 0.5 s/word
1/70 to 1/120 min = 0.5 to 1 s - heart rate
Heart rate
Heart rate is the number of heartbeats per unit of time, typically expressed as beats per minute . Heart rate can vary as the body's need to absorb oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide changes, such as during exercise or sleep....

period, frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...

2 to 1 hertz
Hertz
The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
Sensory memory
Sensory memory
During every moment of an organism's life, sensory information is being taken in by sensory receptors and processed by the nervous system. Humans have five main senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Sensory memory allows individuals to retain impressions of sensory information after the...

up to 1 s.

1-10 s:

breathing period
reading/talking speed, 1-5 s/sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
Short term memory up to 10 to 15 s

10-100 s

60 seconds = one minute
Minute
A minute is a unit of measurement of time or of angle. The minute is a unit of time equal to 1/60th of an hour or 60 seconds. In the UTC time scale, a minute on rare occasions has 59 or 61 seconds; see leap second. The minute is not an SI unit; however, it is accepted for use with SI units...

1,000 s:

3600 seconds = one hour
Hour
The hour is a unit of measurement of time. In modern usage, an hour comprises 60 minutes, or 3,600 seconds...

, one lesson
Lesson
A lesson is a structured period of time where learning is intended to occur. It involves one or more students being taught by a teacher or instructor...

10,000 s:

28,600 seconds = 8 hours—one workday in most Western countries
86,400 seconds = one day
Day
A day is a unit of time, commonly defined as an interval equal to 24 hours. It also can mean that portion of the full day during which a location is illuminated by the light of the sun...

= 24 hours, sleep
Sleep
Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than...

, awake
Awake
Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state and state of consciousness in which an individual is conscious and engages in a coherent cognitive and behavior responses to the external world such as communication, ambulation, nutritional ingestion and procreation...

100,000 s:

604,800 seconds = week
Week
A week is a time unit equal to seven days.The English word week continues an Old English wice, ultimately from a Common Germanic , from a root "turn, move, change"...

= 7 days (with one weekend
Workweek
The workweek and weekend are those complementary parts of the week devoted to labour and rest respectively. The legal working week , or workweek , is the part of the seven-day week devoted to labor. In most Western countries it is Monday to Friday. The weekend comprises the two traditionally...

)

1,000,000 s:

30 days length of the month
Month
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which was first used and invented in Mesopotamia, as a natural period related to the motion of the Moon; month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of moon phases; such months are synodic months and last approximately...

, Biorhythm
Biorhythm
Biorhythm is an attempt to predict various aspects of a person's life through simple mathematical cycles. Most scientists believe that the idea has no more predictive power than raw chance, and consider the concept an example of pseudoscience.-Beliefs:...

10,000,000 s, 116 days to 3.2 years:

9 month
Month
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which was first used and invented in Mesopotamia, as a natural period related to the motion of the Moon; month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of moon phases; such months are synodic months and last approximately...

human gestation
Gestation
Gestation is the carrying of an embryo or fetus inside a female viviparous animal. Mammals during pregnancy can have one or more gestations at the same time ....
31,560,000 seconds = year
Year
A year is the orbital period of the Earth moving around the Sun. For an observer on Earth, this corresponds to the period it takes the Sun to complete one course throughout the zodiac along the ecliptic....

100,000,000 s, 3.2 to 32 years:

a decade
Decade
A decade is a period of 10 years. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek dekas which means ten. This etymology is sometime confused with the Latin decas and dies , which is not correct....
a human generation
Generation
Generation , also known as procreation in biological sciences, is the act of producing offspring....

1,000,000,000 s:

2,400,000,000 seconds = 75 years -- average life span in the first world
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
3,156,000,000 seconds = century
Century
A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...

See also