A shake is an informal unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds, or 10-8 seconds. It has applications in nuclear physics, helping to conveniently express the timing of various events in a nuclear explosion.
This is also applicable to circuits. Since signal progression in IC chips is very rapid, on the order of nanoseconds, a shake is good measure on how quickly a signal can progress through an IC.
Like many nuclear units, it is derived from Top Secret operations of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The word comes from the expression "two shakes of a lamb's tail," which indicates a very short time interval. For nuclear-bomb designers, 10 nanoseconds was a convenient specific interval to connect to this term.
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