24 hour day

Discussion in 'History' started by mathman, Sep 21, 2014.

  1. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    60 sec. = 1 min., 60 min. = 1 hr., 24 hr. = 1 day. The 60's came from ancient Babylonian number system. Where did the 24 come from?
     
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Without supporting or refuting any of your assertions, it seems to me, that 24 is determined by all the other numbers. Otherwise, it wouldn't add up to a day, would it?

    If you start with 60 seconds, and 60 minutes, you get a time unit of one hour. There happen to be 24 of those in a day.
     
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  5. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    This assumes that the length of a second is fixed. If it were twice as long there would be only twelve hours in a day.
     
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  7. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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  8. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Silly,silly boy! The length of the second IS fixed! And has been for a very long time.
     
  9. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    It's not where did the 24 come from. It was 2 twelve hour parts to each day & the 12 came from the ancient Babylonian system.
     
  10. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    That's what I was going to say.

    Of course, the numbers are arbitrary. A "day" is the time it takes the earth to rotate once. That time could be divided into 17 hours. Every third hour could be divided into 29 minutes with the remaining two divided into 91 minutes each. (And clocks would be much harder to build.)
     
  11. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    Several replies seem to assume that the ancients set the definitions of second, minute, hour, based on the length of a second. I believe that the number of hours per day was first set to be 24 and the minutes and seconds were defined using 60.

    Notice that a similar thing was done for circles. The degree was defined to be 1/360 part of a circle (360 day calendar ?) and minutes and seconds defined using 60.
     
  12. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    That was the end result yet it began with the number 12.
     
  13. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe, start with base 6
    start with 331 equal sized disks(pennies will do)
    place one on your desk
    around it place a tightly packed ring of the disks, (there will be six disks in that ring)
    then a second ring around the first ring(there will be 12 disks in the 2nd ring)
    then a 3rd ring (18 disks)
    then a 4th ring (24 disks)
    then a 5th ring (30 disks) it becomes that the number of the ring times 6 gives the number of disks in the ring
    etc... on up to the 10th ring(60 disks)
    and here we have multiplication and division
    then the disks in ring one multiplied by the disks in ring ten give us 360

    fascinating in the potentials within it's simplicity

    care to discuss prime numbers in base 6?

    oops
    then 24 hours in a day
    sorry that seems to be beyond my ken
     
  14. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    Why 12 for the half day?
     
  15. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    Why 12 for the half day?
     
  16. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    12 hours for day & 12 hours for night.
     
  17. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Unless we come up with something better:

    dywyddyr's nick lomb link/quote seems likely for the egyptians' approximate 10-,1 and 1,-12 = 24 hour day and a night

    Have you ever tried to tell time via a sun dial? The greeks, then seem to have pushed accuracy a tad farther.

    the egyptians also had a 360 day year, followed by 5 or 6 god/feast days

    tying in minutes and seconds probably followed development of modern chronometers

    mathman, are you looking for absolutes where only approximations and guesses from archaeological evidence can be found?
     
  18. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    I am trying to get some idea (archeological or other evidence) how the number 12 was decided upon as the number of divisions for a half day.

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/15/3364432.htm as referenced Dywyddyr seems to be the answer.
    .
     
  19. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    The thing with archaeology is that we only know today's results.
    For example the dig at Göbekli Tepe turned the whole agricultural revolution on it's head. It had been assumed for over 70 years that first there would be agriculture followed by complex hierarchical societies, and then monumental architecture. Now, the envelope has been pushed back several thousand years for the monumental architecture.
    If the knowing is derived from archaeology, then take the knowledge as "today's knowledge" only(not an absolute).

    Who knows what tomorrow might bring? One fine day, another archaeologist may uncover a sundial with divisions of 12 hours that predates Göbekli Tepe.
    It is also claimed that the egyptians divided the night into 18 forty minute segments which would add up to the 12 hours.

    ............
    thanks for the curiosity
     
  20. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    The earliest calendars were lunar.
     

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