length (redirected from muscle length)

length

1. Prosody Phonetics the metrical quantity or temporal duration of a vowel or syllable

2. the distance from one end of a rectangular swimming bath to the other

3. Prosody the quality of a vowel, whether stressed or unstressed, that distinguishes it from another vowel of similar articulatory characteristics. Thus in English beat is of greater length than in English bit

4. Cricket the distance from the batsman at which the ball pitches

5. Bridge a holding of four or more cards in a suit

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Length

A one-dimensional extension in space. Length is one of the three fundamental physical quantities, the others being mass and time. It can be measured by comparison with an arbitrary standard; the specific one in most common usage is the international meter. In 1983, at the meeting of the Conférence Général des Poids et Mésures, the meter was redefined in terms of time and the speed of light: “The meter is the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.” This definition defines the speed of light to be exactly 299 792 458 m/s, and defines the meter in terms of the most accurately known quantity, the second. See Light, Mass, Time