Second

The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day, first into 24 hours, then into 60 minutes, and lastly into 60 seconds, for a total of 24 × 60 × 60 = 86400 seconds per day. That definition, based on 1⁄86400 of a rotation of the Earth, is still used by the Universal Time 1 (UT1) system. The current and formal definition in the International System of Units (SI) is more precise:The second [...] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium (Cs) frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the Cs-133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit hertz, which is equal to s−1. This current definition was adopted in 1967 when it became feasible to define the second based on fundamental properties of nature with caesium clocks. As the speed of Earth's rotation varies and is slowing ever so slightly, a leap second is added at irregular intervals to civil time to keep clocks in sync with Earth's rotation.