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Isn't it Time for Metric Time?
xenocytekron writes: "Sure, our time system is ok, but does it make sense? Is it easy? Think about it: 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year. Currently, all the world uses the Metric System except for the US. But what about Time? The solution is Metric Time, that is, a time system which uses Base-10 and Metric Standards. So what do you think: Is it Time, for Metric Time?"
Slashdotted already? Here's the Google cache of the page.
Yes, the current system of time makes sense.
e .html
n it s/Time/Alternative_Schemes/
The time system in current use is a standard that the SI has signed off on, so it is Metric Time.
Actually, there is absolutly no reason to revamp how the global standards for time keeping are operated.
Good page about time history.
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/tim
Here are Yahoo links to the page about alternative schemes.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Measurements_and_U
...because 60 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. So dividing the day into 60 hours, each of which contains 60 minutes, and each minute of which contains 60 seconds, would probably be more convenient.
An extra hour would be nice, but sometimes it is just a few seconds more.
Then use the good old google cache - http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:r9MHgtv93-YC: zapatopi.net/metrictime.html+=en=UTF-8
The human body's "biorhythms" are apparently based on a 25-hour cycle. Now that I'm actually looking for it, I can't find any links to the research, but perhaps someone more "in the know" can provide this information, as I'm positive that I didn't imagine this fact. There've been some really interesting studies done on this and sleep, I wish I could find the link. (I suppose chances are slim that anyone else would happen to have bookmarked a URL for something about 25 hour biorhythms and sleep?) Can anyone help me out here?
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suwain_2
Yeah, but it would probably cost half as much as that Mars Orbiter that crashed cause because someone screwed up the conversion.
The division into 60 is a Sumerian system, but their native system is to divide the day into powers of 60.
The uniform hours divided by base 60 is a Greek invention. The Romans divided the hour into 12 uncia. [The romans used weight-fractions: the unit = 1 libra: therefore a scruple of time is 12 1/2 seconds = 1/288 hour]
The metric system was meant to replace the angle and the length with a decimally divided quadrant: so it would be appropriate to divide the quarter day likewise. It makes some sense to do it like this.
Of course, you can consistantly divide the circle, day, and circumference into any system. Eg I use a circle divided into powers of 120, a nautical system of a marinal (9120 ft) of 120 segments (76 ft). This is the 'minute' and 'second' of the base 120 system. The day is divided into 12 hours of 120 min of 120 seconds
You can use other divisions as well, eg a decimally divided circle.
One thing I keep in mind is the clock division. In our clock, the hours use the major markings, which serve as multiples of the minute. So you could, in something like base 14, use a day divided into 16 hours of 56 minutes a peice. The clock is divided into hour-octants, each of sevenths.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I should have done this first, but Google for "25 hour day".. i think the quotes are significant to the search. A front page hit is this article from Harvard. The next hit says the brain's day is 24 hours, 11 minutes long, not the 25 hours earlier studies concluded.
You can read the rest of the Google hits.
Intelligent Life on Earth
While I agree that 60, 60, 24 isn't the most easy thing, it has been done far longer than would be easy to switch. FYI, the whole sets of 60 came from the Babylonians (which is also where we get 360 degrees in a circle). By the way, I don't see anyone trying to get the world to go to gradians (100 grads per quarter circle instead of 90 degrees).
But anyways, I'll bite. Why not go to a "metric time"? Here's why: the entire metric system is based on other parts of the metric system. What is a milliliter? Yes, it's 1/1000th of a Liter, but it's also one centimeter cubed. It's also based on water: one cubic centimeter of (pure) water is one gram. (Here's a hint: this is where mass comes from). But where do we get distances? The meter is derived from the SECOND. Translation: the second _IS_ metric. If you try and introduce a "metric time," it will most definately _NOT_ integrate with the metric system as we know it, and it will seriously mess up any hopes of getting a stardard in science and engineering - at least in the US. The rest of the world has it nailed, except us. What's the Earth's gravitational acceleration at sea level? about 32 feet/sec^2 (imperial) or 9.8 meters/sec^2. You change the second (or introduce a new replacement), and this value, which is very well known to physicists and engineers, you're going to mess everything up.
Force, mass, pressure, acceleration, etc. would all be skewed when trying to go to some "decimal" time system.
This is another reason why this "Internet time" nonsense will (should) never catch on. It's not going to help the world in any way. Not possible.
-Xyphoid
Reminds me of an obscure and strange sci-fi-ish novella Where were you last Pluterday?, based (sort of) on the idea that the rich and powerful can buy their way into an eight day of the week, which only they experience... wierd book, and that's not the only reason... worth picking up on the chance in heck you find a copy.
When the French first tried to impose the metric system on its own population, there was significant resistance - particularly among tradesman. The ever-efficient French simply applied the death penalty for a tradesman to own a non-metric measuring tool. Catch your builder owning a yardstick meant you didn't have to pay the bill, if you get my drift, so pretty soon the metric system caught on.
Even so, the metric time was so universally ignored that the government had to choose between dropping the time requirement or depopulating the continent.
And this was at a time when hardly anyone even had a clock.
The reason we have twenty-four hours in a day has to do with basic trigonometry. The ancient Greeks were able to find algebraic expressions for the sine and cosine of 30 degrees and 45 degrees, and the equations for the sines and cosines of differences are:
So one can find the algebraic expressions for the sine and cosine of 15 degrees by using the above equations. (This is left as an exercise to the reader.) So 15 degrees is the smallest whole number interval (in degrees) with an algebraic expression for the sine and cosine, and 360 divided by 15 is 24. Therefore, one hour is the amount of time for the earth to rotate through 15 degrees of arc.
Source: Ptolemy's Almagest
We use base 10 because we were born with 10 fingers. But that doesn't make it the "best" numeric base. In fact, base 12 has a lot of advantages over base 10. 10 can only be divided by 5 and 2. 12 can be divided by 6, 4, 3 and 2.
:-]
Time is based on bases 24 and 60, which are multiples of 12. It's easy to count exacly half a day (12 hours), one third of a day (8 hours) and one quarter of a day (6 hours). The happen to correspond (roughly) to day / night, awake / asleep and morning / day / afternoon / night, which are "important" periods from a biological & natural point of view. Same goes for years (if a year had 10 months, each season would be 2.5 months long, and seasons are not quite as "artificial" as they may seem).
Here are a couple of pages about base 12:
DGSB
StudyWorks
Of course, changing everything from base 10 to base 12 would be more trouble than it's worth, but there's no reason to "downgrade" the way we count time just to comply with a "rule" that exists only because some people count by their fingers. I suppose men could learn to use base 11 with a bit of training...
The main problem with the way we keep time is converting quickly (mentally) between seconds, minutes and hours. But the solution is pretty simple: always work in seconds (the SI unit).
P.S. - In fact, it's possible to count up to 32 using just one hand (think binary), but I've never met anyone who does it intuitively.
RMN
~~~
I think people in the US don't want to switch because there is no advantage to a switch. Really, what would the point be? There are 260 million people happy with the current system, why should they switch?
This would be the point
You can't take the sky from me...
IIRC, ISO-8601 is the spec for dates and times. It's 2002-07-04, or 2002W264 (if you prefer week numbers and days-of-week, plus variants for Julian days (not Julian Dates, which are entirely different), etc.
Most people who have tried it quickly like it. It's also trivial to sort dates without special logic.
Unfortunately, I think Windows apps may still not really support it. I remember trying to switch to it during Y2K, and a lot of programs barfed on this format (giving me an oh-so-useful blank field) even while working on silly formats like d/y/m.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
We didn't decide to have 360 degrees in a circle. Uh, sure we did. The Babylonians chose 360, not because some intrinsic property of circles suggests division into 360 parts, but merely because it has many integer factors. There's no mathematical reason why decimal divisions couldn't be used. In fact, such a scale already exists- gradians, where a gradian equals 10/9 degrees. A whole circle equals 400 gradians then, making a right angle 100 radians. It's not used very often, since it's a pretty pointless scale- there's no advantage compared with degrees, other than multiples of 10 commonly cropping up. If you want a division based on intrinsic properties of the circle, well, use radians. After several physics courses, they've definitely become my preferred system- I think in radians, and then perhaps convert to degrees if it's called for. For both radians and gradians, conversions are fairly easy- no need for a table, just the ability to multiply fractions. Any other invented system would be just as easy. I could develop a decimal circle system composed of 100 intervals- call them "slashdots." Half a circle would be 50 slashdots, and a right angle (quarter circle) would be 25 slashdots. Makes sense, doesn't it? The slashdot system makes calculations of angles or rotations much larger than one full circle much easier: 9.5 rotations are equal to 3420 degrees, but also 950 slashdots. The only problem with the slashdot circle system is the same one the Babylonians avoided with a 360 degree circle: integer factors. The rather important angle known as 45 degrees or pi/4 radians becomes 12.5 slashdots. Much, much worse, the angle known as 60 degrees or pi/3 radians becomes 16 2/3 slashdots! 360 wasn't chosen because of some special relationship to the circle. Far from it- some of the numbers with intrinsic relationship to the geometry of the circle include transcendentals like pi and e. If the Babylonians couldn't handle fractions, I'd imagine these would be a problem if they had discovered them. 360 was chosen because it is evenly divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12,15,18,20,24,30,36,40,45,60, 72,90,120,180, and 360- no further reason needed.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
After the revolution.
The new "de-christianised" calendar started in 1793 and was retroactive to 1792. The year started on September 22nd and consisted of 12 months of 30 days apiece. Each month was divided into decades of 10 days.
The end of the year had 5 days (6 on leap years) designated by roman numerals.
This was France's official calendar until 1806.
I don't think they changed the number of hours in the day though.
Ironically, what you suggest is called the Universal Transverse Mercator grid, it's already build into all decent GPS models and yes it's based on Metrics.
The Hives has a song called "Introduce The Metric System In Time". I'm totally for it! :)
It's not as simple as you'd have folks believe. Consider the problem faced by a sailor, out of sight of land, without time reference or electronic aids to navigation-batteries do go dead, and mechanical failures occur at the damnedest times. He can find his latitude easily enough, by measuring the altitude of a celestial object, or the sun. (note that latitude runs from 0 to 90 degrees, and the distance subtended by each degree is constant, 60 miles (remember, a nautical mile is 6080 feet) Longitude is much more difficult without an accurate time mark, though lunar observations can be used in its determination (I have heard of this method but have never seen it used or demonstrated) (note that the distance subtended by each degree of longitude varies from 60 miles at the equator to 0 at the pole) also, at the equator, a minute of longitude equals a mile- amazing how these measurements interlock, and how practical those old timers were.
Finally, given the near impossibility of getting politicians to pass sensible legislation regarding the Net, how likely is it that all the world's leaders will agree to a new system, and where would the arbitrary zero be?
Sailors, ever a traditional and pragmatic bunch, won't give up systems and methods paid for in blood and lives, just because geeks or propellerheads or politicians with way too much time on their hands devise some other scheme that has no practical benefit save being tied to some other measuring system.
> Actually, one of the cool things about old English liquid measure ...
> 1 pint = 2^4 fl.oz.
Hmm, that's odd since my 'English' pint seems to be 20fl.oz (not 16), I better get my measuring jugs recalibrated ... or maybe I won't - I like getting a man sized pint for my beer :-)
Next you will be saying that there are not 2240lb to a ton or there is not 14lb to 1 stone.
--An Englishman in England