Decimalise Everything...........

Hi - stupid question (probably) for my first post on this board.

Firstly I should explain that I am blonde - so please be gentle!

I've been having an argument on another board that started off about the Metric System - I'm British and we've seen the gradual introduction of the metric system over the past 30 years or so. I was arguing about why it had certain advantages over the imperial measures - being divisable by ten, etc. However it got me thinking. Why are there 24 hours in a day? Why not just divide the day up into 10 or 100 hours? Why are there 360 degrees in a circle? Again why couldn't it be divided into 100 degrees or 1000?

Does anyone have an explanation that I could comprehend? Preferably, please use a PowerPoint slideshow or words of one sylable.

 

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I thought most blondes liked it - (STOP THAT! BAD XEV!)

In answer to your question:

It's that way because it's always been that way. 10 hour days would be hard to get used to all of a sudden.

It's like military time - people have a hard time adjusting to the change.

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There was a metric clock. Agggggges ago. It was tried, and failed.

There was like 20 hours in a day or something. And 100 minutes to the hour. Minutes were a different length though, I believe.

And there were only 10 months. Ten days a week.

It was just stupid so people never accepted it.

 

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This is one suggestion I found on the internet on the why of a 24 hour division for a day.

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For the 360 degree circle I found this:

The basic answer to your question is that, like a lot of our mathematics and astronomy, it comes from the Babylonians. But apparently exactly how that came about is not known. It is known that the Babylonians liked things with 60 in them. They used a base 60 number system. This has some advantages over our base 10 because 60 is evenly divisible by a lot of numbers. That base 60 is why we have 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. They also had a calendar with 360 days (12 months of 30 days each). Some sources say that the 360 degrees in the circle came from the calendar.

We do divide a circle into other measurements. Such as minutes and seconds. Not just for time but for smaller parts of a circle than a degree. In the military we divided it into an increment called mills. 6400 of them for a circle. This in turn gives a finer degree of division and a greater degree of accuracy

 

I figured maybe it was because the year was divided by 12 moons, so might as well divide day and night by 12 segments. *shrug* Actually my astronomy book back home has a good description of why we use this system, but I don't recall what it said.

 

Why do we use base 10? we have eleven states in total...

 

Thats an easy question

count you fingers

Theres your answer

(don't understand what you mean about the states though)

 

Yeah sorry, I forgot its a term we use in computing.

Each finger can either be up or down.

When they are all up we have ten.

when they are all down we have zero. So why don't we count ZERO, one, two ......, nine, ten. instead of ONE, two, .... nine, ten.

:bugeye:

We count to ten because we have ten fingers, but we have eleven sequential numbers we can count with them. therefore we should use base eleven.

 

Thanks guys, & thanks for the welcome! - I should have realised those darn babylonians were involved!

I remember reading somewhere that 60 is used in many measurements because it's easily divisable into 2 (& further) leaving nice whole numbers and no messy decimals.

I still can't fathom any reason for being inflicted with 360 degrees rather than 1000 - or 100. I'm sure the inventors did it all as a big April joke & are laughing at us all from heaven (hell I hope!).

I didn't realise that Wet1 - I was in the RAF for a while - we didn't use that (as far as i remember) However I haven't fallen out of the habit of using the 24hour clock and the phonetic alphabet!

 

Adam,

I think the year can be divided in 13 moons, not 12, since the moon cycle is 28 days.

But I suspect 13 has been considered superstitious for a long time.

 

Asguard,

10 is really not a good number, the only factors are 2 and 5, i.e. halves and fifths.

Using your 10 fingers the maximum you can count up to is 1023, and if zero is included then that makes 1024 states. On a single hand the maximum is 31.

A far more useful system would have been base 12, with factors 2,3,4,6. From that we can take halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths.

My personal preference is either Octal (base 8) or Hexadecimal (base 16).

The problem of a decimal calendar is the perceived awkward number of days in a year, and even then it isn't an integral number, hence the need for leap years. Whatever system is used for the calendar there will always have to be some form of fudge factor to allow for the non-integral nature of the system.

Decimal time –

100,000 seconds per day (0.864 real seconds per new second).
100 seconds per minute.
100 minutes per hour.
1000 minutes per day.
10 hours per day.

1 new hour = 8640 real seconds, or 144 real minutes, 2.4 real hours.
1 new minute = 86.4 real seconds, or 1.44 real minutes.
1 new second = 0.864 real seconds.

The new second would be pretty much like normal verbal counting speed, and at 86.4% of a real second it would be very practically similar to real seconds. I reckon that wouldn’t be too difficult to get used to.

Decimal Calendar –

I wouldn’t bother with months at all.

Divide the year into 10-day weeks giving at least 36 weeks in a year. Week 37 would be either a 5-day week or a 6-day week in a leap year.

Days could be named –

Oneday, Twoday, Threeday, Fourday, Fiveday, Sixday, Sevenday, Eightday, Nineday, Tenday.

Oneday thru Threeday would be holidays. I.e. 3 days.
Fourday through Tenday would be work days. I.e. 7 days.

This arrangement ensures that week 37 starts with holidays and has only 2 or 3 workdays before another 3 day break. If holidays were at the end of the week then all of week 37 would be workdays (5 or 6 days) that would flow into another 7 work days in week 1, making a straight 12 work days without a break.

So there would be 254 workdays in a normal year, and 255 in a leap year.
That compares with 261 workdays now or 262 in a leap year.

Holiday days would be 111 days in any year.
That compares with 104/105 days now.

The date could be written year/week/day, for example 2002/33/6 = Sixday of the 33rd week.

The big advantage is having a 3-day weekend. A two-day weekend has always been too short. Saturdays are used to recover from the week leaving only Sunday to relax. And going away somewhere for a weekend is always a rush. Having a third day would make a major difference.

Week 37 would always be fun with only 2 or 3 work days and a 3 day break either side. If the tradition of taking vacation at year end continues then those 2 or 3 days would probably end up as vacation days anyway for most people.

So does everyone agree?

Cris

 

If you look at the Months Chris, you'll find that they use to be Decimal (Roman Decimalisation)

October was the 8th month

They all got moved round because someone mentioning no names (Julius Ceasar), As a dictator... oops Ceasar, he decided as someone with power and a method of sharing his success with the world (peasants) that he wanted a Month to have his Celebrations in (JULY), so with that the romans started messing with the Julian Calendar.

http://serendipity.magnet.ch/hermetic/cal_stud/cal_art.htm

 

S,

Ok thanks I didn't know that.

 

So you are saying that we should use binary? That would get confusing...

 

lollypop,

"Time" was created just to make things "organized". Like numbers themselves...

If you think about it, while here is... 13:00 for example, in another part of the world would be 7:00...

It's just rationalized organization. If you pay attention, once you stop rationalizing there's only present...

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Love,
Nelson

 

60 was used because it can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10. This allows various amounts of the hour to be measured accurately. You can't divide 100 by 3 or six evenly, so 60 was used. Am I making sense?

 

Howstuffworks.com have an interesting article about this

How time works

 

I never heard of mills used this way. It's not as accurate as degree-minute-second because a mils is 17.777 seconds, but probably easier to use than a base 60 system like d-m-s. Another common measurment for angles is the radian. Real common in doing trig equations.

In mapping we divide the circle into quadrants. It's based on North, South, East and West. Instead of starting from a single location, you first measure from the base direction of being north or south. Next you specify which direction from there you are heading, either east or west. The angle is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds with a maximum number of 90 degrees. This is called a bearing and is written like this:

N 36d 45' 12" E

The "d" being a degree symbol. A bearing of:

S 36d 45' 12" W

would be the same "angle" as the previous one, but heading in the opposite direction.

By the way, does anyone know why the degree symbol was never included in a standard computer keyboard? You would think that a degree being used in measurments of angles and temperature, there would be a common need for it in scientific and engineering uses.

Why are there 3 types of brackets? (), {}, & [] ?