A stopwatch is a watch that measures fractions of time with great precision.
In the Greek. This language is where the etymological origin of the word that we now want to analyze in depth is found: chronometer . And it is made up of two Greek components:
• Chronos , which was the name of the Greek god of time.
• Metron , which can be translated as “measurement.”
What is a stopwatch
A stopwatch is a precision watch used to measure very small fractions of time . Unlike conventional watches that are used to measure the minutes and hours that govern everyday time, stopwatches are often used in sports competitions and in industry to keep track of shorter fractions of time, such as thousandths of a second .
For example: “When the Jamaican looked at the stopwatch, he smiled: he had set a new world record,” “I like to go jogging with a stopwatch to try to improve each of my marks,” “In our factory, stopwatches are essential, since "If we delay for a second we can lose thousands of dollars."
Stopwatches are used in sports disciplines such as athletics.
Different uses
In addition to sports events, it is also necessary to use the stopwatch in other cases. Thus, for example, it is common for it to be used in certain board games that require participants to have a limited time to perform a function or even by the judges of the Guinness Books of Records, in various cases.
All this without forgetting that they are also within the marine field. In this case, we would have to talk about the so-called marine chronometers that are identified because they are found on ships, because they have extreme precision and because their function is to carry out a fundamental mission: to determine the time with complete accuracy. And only in this way will it be possible to calculate what would be the exact geographical position of the vessel in question.
Operation of a stopwatch
Typically, the stopwatch starts when the user presses a button . The mechanism, in this way, starts counting from zero. When this button is pressed again, the stopwatch stops, accurately displaying the elapsed time.
Most stopwatches allow measuring various time periods with identical beginnings but different endings. This allows successive times to be recorded, while the first measured time continues to be recorded in the background.
The contributions of technology
The most advanced stopwatches are started and stopped with some automatic mechanism, without a person having to press a button. Different types of sensors allow you to start and end time recording with an accuracy that is impossible to achieve if it were recorded manually. An example of a highly accurate stopwatch that works with sensors is the one used in athletics events.
With the advances in technology we have to make it clear that a lot has evolved within the chronometer sector. Thus, these have not only been perfected but have also seen how models that were online type appeared on the Internet. Without forgetting either that now all smartphones also incorporate their own.