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I don't actually know the answer and I know I could just look on wikipedia but I thought it might stir some interesting discussion.
Why isn't time decimalised? it'd make it easier to teach to kids and easier to calculate when working out time stuff.
Was it just because some old guy pre-industrialisation decided that was the way it should be and by the time they figured out it would be better decimalised it was already entrenched?
Flip the question round if you like with 'why is time split into 60?'
Enlighten me.
The ancient Sumerians (i think it was them) used a number system based on 60. They were the 1st to divide up the day and we've just carried on using their system.
blame the sumarians. Beaten to it. Better would be to ask why we don't use base 60 now when it's so much more divisible than base 10.
60 is a number that can be divided in half, in thirds, in quarters, in fifths, tenths, twelfths and more. 100 isn't as flexible.
There's actually a reasonable amount of sense to some of the bases that pre-decimalisation systems used. The inconsistencies between the various systems were more of a problem than the fact that they didn't use base 10 for everything, in my opinion.
What would be the basis? 100 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour etc? Seconds would be really fast!
Or a whole new system entirely? That would be very hard to get used to and would probably outweigh any benefits.
You can't really change days or other larger (calendar related) time periods.
What would be the basis? 100 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour etc?
100 days in a year? That'd make me really really old
it is if you are doing any kind of data science or time-series analysis. its just humans that need some sort of easily readable time/date.
Unix Time Stamp - Epoch Converter
I think there's been more effort made towards reforming the calendar so that the months and quarters in the year are more similar in length to each other than they are now than there has been in reforming the clock.
Hmm, be quite a hard changover wouldn't it. Not really like having a few new coins in your pocket.. or saying that's 15cm long now. And what if there was some stupid country like England who decided not to change...
It's gotta one of the only things that is agreed upon in every country in the world.
Is that correct? (wary of making statements here as you get pulled to bits if you're wrong.)
That is curious considering the language and social differences that exist between nations.
Do all nations agree on a 12 month calendar system too?
so the only thing agreed upon by all nations is time and the calendar? that and the fact that Amercia is mental.
(wary of making statements here as you get pulled to bits if you’re wrong.)
No you don't - show me the evidence
that and the fact that Amercia is mental.
have you seen their time/date format? animals.
Radians. The world spins. The world circles the sun. Time is all about (near) circles, and dividing them up. Their have been attempts to decimalise time for human use... but the benefits aren't great... even if it is surprisingly hard to teach young kids time as we currently divide it up. Of course, computers don't care... so time (of day) is broken up in all sorts of ways there.
Do all nations agree on a 12 month calendar system too?
the French revolutionaries had a go at changing this with new names and month lengths. I'd say it's not that resolved internationally with the lunar month, our weird rules for Easter, and Ramadan moving round the year because of lack of calendar adjustment.
We've reached the point now where the second is intertwined too deeply in the SI system.
And the day is also kind of fixed for practical reasons.
Suggestions for how to decimally split up the 86400 seconds better than our current system?
have you seen their time/date format?
what happened on the 9th of November?
What exactly would be the benefit?
I’m still upset that Swatch Internet Time didn’t take off.
I actually use the combination of Beats and Julian day for all sorts of things that are never exposed to human understanding.
🤓
that and the fact that Amercia is mental.
have you seen their time/date format? animals.
I'm actually with the US on their month-day approach, they just put the year in the wrong place. Every single other measurement we use is big-endian, dates should be yyyy-mm-dd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
I have a plan to carve the year into 73 weeks of 5 days. 3 working days a week, 2 day weekend. The weeks are then perfectly divisible into the year so working dates are fixed. Obvs every 4 years we ratchet on a day.
We all get more weekends and less work stress.
Haven't decided what to do about the months yet but I'll come up with an idea.
You heard it here first.
Why do we need months? 😉
Leave time and calendars alone... it is how it is. Leave any rationalisation to the robots.
I’m actually with the US on their month-day approach, they just put the year in the wrong place
It's their failure to choose an endedness that is the problem. Choose one don't jump around.
Napoleon beat you to it
Do all nations agree on a 12 month calendar system too?
There are quite a few calendars in use, the obvious ones that spring to mind are the Gregorian one we use, and the Islamic lunar one.
The biggest problem is it would really upset roadies and runners strava stats lol.
Next you'll be wondering why trouser sizes are in inches. And women's clothes 10,12,14.. what's that all about?
I never actually thought about this to be honest. Good luck with trying to change it now though!
Speaking as a scientist, measuring in seconds and minutes is kind of annoying. How do you compare something that takes 5'33s to something that takes 4'58s? The answer is you have to convert it to the number of seconds, which is surprisingly easy to get wrong (if you do the calculations in your head). YBMV.
I remember seeing a 'metric stopwatch' once, maybe on the antiques roadshow. It was owned by a science teacher IIRC.
The second is the S.I. unit of time. It's effectively decimalized when it's used in science and engineering. One hour is 3.6 x 10^3 seconds and one year is 3.15576 x 10^7 seconds, for example.
In everyday use, the day/minute/second thing works well enough and changing it would be an enormous disruption.
Do all nations agree on a 12 month calendar system too?
Nope. Ethiopian's have 12 months of 30 days, and a 13th to mop up the remaining 5 or 6. However, they're also 7-8 years behind us, due to the disputed date of the birth of Jesus (not the football player).
The second is the SI unit but it's not actually the ultimate unit of time; that is the frequency of a caesium 133 atom ground state transition, which never changes. 9,192,631,770Hz. And since a second is 1Hz^1 you can now relate seconds to observing that transition. The clocks a few paces from my office are doing that right now.
Gradually all the SI units have transitioned from artefacts to the definitions based on fundamental constants.
https://www.npl.co.uk/si-units/the-redefinition-of-the-si-units
But if you actually look at the true definitions of the 7 SI units, in the end they come back to a few physical constants and the second, or in one case, the mole.
So for example the metre is defined from the speed of light in vacuum (a constant, c), if you can measure the time absolutely you know the distance absolutely, which we define in m (but really is a fraction of c)
More complex - a kilogram
The kilogram is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the Planck constant, ℎ, to be 6.626 070 15 × 10-34 when expressed in the unit J s, which is equal to kg m^2 s^−1.
But we just determined that distance is defined by measuring time accurately, so in the end the m part of it is really a time measurement.
Another....The candela is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the luminous efficacy of monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 Hz, Kcd, to be 683 when expressed in the unit lm W−1, which is equal to cd sr W^−1 or cd sr kg^–1 m^–2 s^3 (sr = steradians)
But the metre is related back to the second, and the kg is related to the metre and the second (so, the second and the second again)
Know the second - and you can work out the rest
one last SI / unit fact. If you're not sure whether the unit is capital or lower case - units that are named after people are upper case. So W = watt, J = joule, K = kelvin, etc. but kg = kilogram, s = second)
Never get that wrong again.
Know the second – and you can work out the rest
I'm not sure who the "you" is that you refer to, it certainly isn't me.
I think the next idea Boris will have when he needs to distract our attention (later today) is that months will be furlongs (8 to the year), days will be pounds (14 to the furlong), hours will be shillings (20 to the pound) minutes will be pints (8 the shilling) and seconds will be ounces (16 to the shilling.
If you did , it would bugger up maritime navigation
Never get that wrong again.
Join me in my lifelong campaign to get people to use "cm" rather than "CM".
My campaign would be to use 10mm instead of CM. And I am still upset that the sensible c/s (cycles per second) got changed to Hz.
Join me in my lifelong campaign to get people to not use use cm or CM at at all.
🤣
I also try to push everything to "mm" rather than "cm" where I can... but the resistance is too high... one to admit defeat on.
A more worthy lifelong campaign would be to get people to use metric measurements in the first place. (I'm looking at you, guitar manufacturers. WTF does 4/64ths of an inch look like? And why is it not simplified to 1/16th?)
no, the unit is kelvin, the symbol is K
Calendar is relatively simple to organise. 12 months each of 30 days and a 5 or 6 day year end or midwinter festval holiday
I was strongly on the "yes, but imagine the pain" side but proposing a new calendar with a neat 12 months / 30 days, and an about-a-week holiday at the end sounds awesome and a much easier sell.
Though I'd prefer to live in the southern hemisphere so it's in the summer, unless we also rotate the year six months at the same time.
Didn't the forum used to embed YouTube vids automatically? Anyway Dave Allen on time.
that and the fact that Amercia is mental.
have you seen their time/date format? animals.
Ha, the Americans are mere amateurs here. For off the scale stupidity, I give you Canada which can't quite shake off the influence of the Brits, the French or the big brother south of the border. Not only do they use metric and imperial standards interchangeably, they also have some sort of schizophrenia about date formats and can never decide whether to use dd-mm-yyyy or mm-dd-yyyy.
I remember filling in at least one official immigration form which swapped between date formats part way thru the form (in that case, at least the form told you which format to use). Other forms, you have to guess. And if I get it wrong, my birthday changes from 7/10 to 10/7....
Personally, I now write dates out in YYYY-MM-DD (with the added bonus that Windows can easily sort folders in chronological order if you use that naming standard)
I now write dates out in YYYY-MM-DD
On the side of the robots.
units that are named after people are upper case
Usage in America can differ in this though (e.g. L in US for liters, l or L used elsewhere (for litres).
^ technically the litre isn't really an SI unit which would be the m^3, or potentially the dm^3 (0.1mx0.1mx0.1m)
But the litre is in common enough usage that it is recognised, and then some do L uppercase to avoid confusion between l and 1
Yes, I think L is recommended by NIST for that reason IIRC.
I have a plan to carve the year into 73 weeks of 5 days. 3 working days a week, 2 day weekend. The weeks are then perfectly divisible into the year so working dates are fixed. Obvs every 4 years we ratchet on a day.
All you need then is a Gormanuary.
If we got rid of months then we could abandon the stupid idea that we register cars twice a year and at silly times. If we Started that on Jan 1st then we would have mid year bulges and even Jan first would be quiet if we imposed bank holidays. Do we even need years . If we all started again on day one hw big a number would we reach in days before the world died anyway or more sensibly when theose who invenetd the idea died? Who cares what mess they will be in in 500 years time?
If we're starting again, can we have Christmas every 18 old months please.
our weird rules for Easter
Only weird due to an attempt to crowbar a pagan celebration into a religious celebration which should be fixed.
Join me in my lifelong campaign to get people to use “cm” rather than “CM”.
Obviously a member as it’s something I do as a matter of course.
I have a plan to carve the year into 73 weeks of 5 days. 3 working days a week, 2 day weekend. The weeks are then perfectly divisible into the year so working dates are fixed. Obvs every 4 years we ratchet on a day.
We all get more weekends and less work stress.
Well, I do a five day shift, followed by a four day ‘weekend’, then another five day shift, followed by a five day ‘weekend’, then a four day shift, then another five day ‘weekend’, so about 70 days off a year, but that doesn’t include my annual holiday allowance of twenty five days, plus an extra day off for my birthday, and a ‘well-being’ day, which I can take at any time.
My work days are twelve hours, but the time off makes up for it. 😎
Yes, I think L is recommended by NIST for that reason IIRC.
Do you know / have dealings with NIST?
Join me in my lifelong campaign to get people to use “cm” rather than “CM”.
Obviously a member as it’s something I do as a matter of course.
The ignorance is strong in this thread.
Correct notation below.
Xcm=X0mm or Xcm=0.0Xm
cm a primary school measurement construct...
mm... thats all there is
mm is no more a base unit than cm is
both have SI symbols though
by all means have mm as preference for sub 1m measurements, it’s mine as well, by cm isn’t just a “school thing”… it’s especially useful for estimates, where mm suggests an extra level of precision that isn’t appropriate
Where's the love for decimetres in s thread about decimalisation?
as above, technically the SI unit is the metre, m
cm and mm and km aren't really SI units in the same way, they are all still the metre but with multipliers added to them. c means 1/100, m means 1/1000, k means 1000.
How many can you name? We can all get kilo and nano and maybe even pico and giga and tera, but what about the others? What is 1/100000000000000 of an ampere better known as?
https://www.npl.co.uk/si-units and scroll down to open up the SI multiples list.
Because when we decimalised currency sweet shops took the opportunity to baffle 7-year olds and raise prices. 240 penny chews to the pound became 100 😠
As confused adults we really would "work twenty-nine hours a day down mill" ( https://genius.com/Monty-python-four-yorkshiremen-live-lyrics for the rest of the sketch)
Do you know / have dealings with NIST?
No, but if I’m writing a paper for publication in a journal I check the journal style guide and NIST is sometimes referenced there in the case of US journals. Whether ml or mL should be used also comes up in the context of student reports and lab write ups. In this context the biggest sin is to mix both styles rather than sticking to one. We also expect a space between the number and the unit, which is sometimes another bone of contention…
Ah, just wondered. NIST is a big organisation but equally it's a small world!
Do all nations agree on a 12 month calendar system too?
The Hebrew year is 12 months alternating between 29 and 30 days, there's a extra month to take up the slack (Adar) 7 times every 19 year cycle. Also it's the year 5782.
What d'you mean complicated..?
We also expect a space between the number and the unit, which is sometimes another bone of contention…
I much prefer a space, just scans more easily. I always add one in all my software tool GUIs etc.
Personally I find the time/maritime navigation thing really interesting, especially the history of timepieces developed for exactly that. Longitude by Dava Sobel is well worth a read if you are interested in that sort of thing
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4806.Longitude
dont lets forget degrees. I mean in a circle, not temperature. 100 is enough.
and spokes. why not 10? or 100?
dont lets forget degrees. I mean in a circle, not temperature. 100 is enough.
and spokes. why not 10? or 100?
its about making accurate divisions (and most imperial meausre are about physical dividing something up rather than adding units together)- you can very simply divide a circle into 6 with the tool you drew it with and from there keep dividing accurately.
Time and navigation is all about plotting our place of a spinning sphere circling a sun so again its about accurately and reliably dividing circles.
Mathematics is a language that elegantly describes reality - if you try to make measurement of time or circles conform to base 10 or 100 your ignoring reality of what you're trying to measure or describe
Anyway time is decimalised if you're measuring in milliseconds 😉
Only weird due to an attempt to crowbar a pagan celebration into a religious celebration which should be fixed.
No, it's because Easter is actually fixed in the Hebrew calendar. It's based on Passover and that is entirely and rationally fixed in the calendar used by the people who invented it
Time and navigation is all about plotting our place of a spinning sphere circling a sun so again its about accurately and reliably dividing circles.
Whatever you do, don't get into the military thing of mils.
Sounds simple, must be 1000 in a circle, right?
No, there are 6283. Or between 6000 and 6400 depending on whose gang you belong to