READY
READY
Ten seconds is the only length of time people still count out loud. Rocket launches, a child handing over a turn, the last of a set, the gap before a race: the number is short enough to say and long enough to matter, which is why it survives as a ritual when almost nothing else does.
In practice it turns up as the rest between sprint repeats, the hold at the top of a stretch, the pause a photographer waits out for a room to settle, and the ten seconds of rest inside a tabata round.
The tip is about handovers. If ten seconds is the last of somebody else's turn, on a swing, a console or a tablet, say the number out loud alongside the timer rather than only showing it. The argument is almost never about the ten seconds; it is about the surprise at the end of them.
Press start, or hit the space bar. At this length the sound matters more than the digits, because you will have looked away before it rings.
Use the stopwatch for anything you are measuring. A countdown tells you when a fixed length is up, which is the opposite job, and your reaction time alone will cost you more than a tenth.
Not on this page, deliberately. For repeated short efforts with a rest between them, the interval timer runs the whole set and sounds at every change.
Yes, as long as sound is on and you have pressed start at least once, which is what unlocks audio in a browser. The alarm plays even when the tab is hidden.