Slashdot Mirror
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?"
So how do you divide 356 by 10? Or is a year now 1000 days?
i think time haw to relate to how long it takes the earth to go around the sun and how long it takes the earth to spin about... not like distance or wieght which really isn't based on anything... maybe the article covers this, but i can't get to it.
When I learned "metric" time in school, the idea was there was a set order that everything appeared in: biggest to smallest. Therefore, the time now is 2002 07 04 23:04. That still makes a lot of sense to me, compared with 7/4/02. It always confuses me - which is the month, and which is the day? Just to be sure, I've actually started spelling out the month like this: 4 JUL 2002. That way, there's no doubt.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I agree. The metric system is great being base 10 and all but sometimes I wish we had evolved with 12 fingers just for this reason.
60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year.
Yeah, we should really change it to 100 days per year, that would be much easier. The only time we may need a new time format is if we seriously get into space, and I can't see that happening in my lifetime.
Personally, I'd just be happy if people started writing dates and times in a common format, even if it's the USA's confusing mm/dd/yyyy version.
I've lived outside the US (Holland, Israel, Egypt, Germany), and while I'm literate with the metric system and use it in Drafting and science measurments, I don't see why the United States needs to transition any farther into the Metric System than it is already.
Baring a Constitutional Amendment, it won't happen.
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?
The US has already tried to switch to the SI unit system. The previous attempt failed miserably: some people just don't want to switch, some people honestly just don't have the mental capacity to understand the difference between the two systems, and relearning a new system just isn't something that they can do. Also, the costs associated with converting to the SI system would be enormous. Paying to have thousands upon thousands of miles of road remarked with new signs would be prohibitively expensive. I think that since the schools have been teaching the metric system for years now, the deciding factor is in fact the infrastructure that has already been laid down.
Think about it: mile markers, X miles to [town name], speed limits - all of these signs would have to be replaced.
I wouldn't exactly call our units system archaic, its rather simple once you understand the basis - the human body as compared to the basis of the metric system (base 10 and something involving the earths core or some such).
As for the actual posting: if you mean metric as the SI system, 60 second minutes, 60 minute hours, 24 hours days, etc ARE SI time.
Exactly. Considering the times are based on natural events it should stay that way.
"Well... it's been only one day but my watch says 1.2314. I'm glad we switched to this new version of time!"
Don't go screwing with a good thing. The time system we have now is somewhat an average of what ancient astronomy has come up with... it's worked pretty good so far.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Unlike measurement of distance, or weight, on Earth whatever unit of measurement we use is going to be based around a day, and there are going to be 365.something of those. There's no way time can be elegant so we may as well give up trying.
There is actually a reason for minutes and hours to be divided into 60 units. It's the lowest number that is divisible by 2,3,4,and 5 i.e. it's easy to divide an hour or minute into sections: 1/2 hour, 1/3 hour 1/5 hour etc.
And why 24 hours do you say. Well 12 is divisible by 2,3 and 4, and there's two parts to a day (night and day).
365 days is just the way it is.
So those anchient babylonians really did know what they were doing.
So, I know there have been ~200 posts already, so no one will actually read this (either that, or I'm being redundant), but:
24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour is kinda handy, when you think about it. It's easier for people to think about. You can divide 24 into halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, and eights pretty easiliy. It's the same deal with 60 minutes in an hour. Tenths, halves, thirds, sixths, they're all easy to wrap your head around. No fractions, no decimals.
Metric would still be pretty good, but after halves and quarters it begins to get messy. Hey, I'm lazy, so it's 24 hours days for me for the forseeable future. ;)
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
Read it.
Still think there is no tangable benifit to the costs associated with the United States mandating a switch.
Besides, I don't see that the States could on thier own order the change, and the Federal Government couldn't either, even if they wanted to.
Wow, look at all those former colonies. Guess being ruled by the British had nothing to do with their driving laws.
Base 12 has 1,2,3,4,6,12
Base 16 has 1,2,4,8,16
Based on the argument of factors alone, hexadecimal just doesn't cut it. It would be even more of a nightmare to do thirds in this system, in my opinion. Also we'd have to relearn everything (OK not all of us!) and in the process we eliminate a good prime factor (5) and avoid another (3).
I design user interfaces for a free network management application,
Can't we just fix the earth' orbit around the sun so that we get better numbers to work with?
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Biggest evidence that they faked the landing, IMHO.
Don't worry, you won't have to eat "113.4g burgers with cheese" - we still have Quarter Pounders here in Australia - "we just don't know what the *&%# a quarter pounder is" (sure isn't 100% beef like the wrapping says).
WOW... is this ever offtopic?
However, I can't resist saying this much:
South Africa isn't exactly your run-of-the-mill third world country. The material and economical standard of whites (and today also a percentage of the black/coloured community) is that of a 1st world country, while the rest of the people under 3rd world circumstances. Also, you have a lot of infra structure and other neat stuff constructed by the apartheid regime, since they had no problem making the life of the whites as comfy as possible while not minding problems and poverty among the rest of the citizens.
As it comes to 1st vs 3rd world countries in general. I guess everyone sees the differences between the European Union and African nations such as Zambia, Mocambique or the Dem. Rep. of Congo. Or between South- and North-Korea.
sj 3
$!
In spaceflight we have a .75:.75 LD cycle (i.e., 45 min. of light followed by 45 min. of dark) and weightlessness. The circadian oscillators are screwed up by this and thus the period retards to approx. 25 hours.
Altering our time system wont change our LD cycle. So unless we want to slow down the Earth's rotation by about 0.8%, we just need to live with it.
BTW, the study that was mentioned before is Alpatov, AM.Circadian rhythms in a long-term duration space flight. Adv Space Res 1992;12(1):249-52. I have included the abstract below: