Interesting, although I stopped reading at the end of page 1. It seemed the article already explained most of it and while I would've scrolled down to skim the rest of the article, waiting for a page load seemed too much effort.
Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
41–50 of 150 posts
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#42From what I've read, the reason is simple: Base 12: 12 is a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6. This makes it a much better fit than base 10, which can only be divided by 2 and 5. Base 60: As good as base 12 is, it misses division by 5. So what do you do to make it divisible? You multiply 12 x 5 = 60. Now you can divide an hour in 2 parts of 30 minutes each, 3 parts of 20 minutes, 4 parts of 15 minutes, 5 pa…
Base 60 has many advantages, but bare in mind that this is dated almost 4000 years ago. When people developed language and started counting, they would need something to keep track and help them go from one number to the other, so the finger tip theory is actually quite accurate.
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#43As an American with a physics background, a while ago I casually reviewed how bad our non-metric system is -- http://joshuaspodek.com/metric-system-isnt -- and found it not nearly as bad as people treat it. Among other things, when I build things it's useful to divide in half a few times, which is easier with inches and feet. And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I b…
In theory I'd prefer a timekeeping system that had its base unit in terms of the smallest discrete unit of time (basically planck time) and let everything else arise naturally from that. Sure, days may not be a perfectly XX kilo-mega-ultra-plank times (I'm unsure of the Metric nomenclature going from a power of -44 to a power of around +4) but I am always peeved we have designed our timekeeping, temperature, pressure, etc measurements bound to arbitrary properties of things on the surface of our planet than on the fundamental properties of the universe.
It is going to make space travel a much bigger hassle, to say the least.
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#44As an American with a physics background, a while ago I casually reviewed how bad our non-metric system is -- http://joshuaspodek.com/metric-system-isnt -- and found it not nearly as bad as people treat it. Among other things, when I build things it's useful to divide in half a few times, which is easier with inches and feet. And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I b…
As a European living in America I disagree. The one value of metric vs imperial is that you (for the most part) don't have to do any math when converting between units. If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. However, 1.73 km is 1730 meters, which is way easier (at least for me, but that might be my b…
No, you're absolutely right. Thing is, most of the time, when dealing with miles, I don't care how many feet it is. Any distance measured in miles is sufficiently large that its equivalent in feet is largely irrelevant. I suppose it's nice to know that 1.73 km is 1730 meters, but either way, it's a medium-long walk. If I needed to convert all the time ( I suspect this it's really only when using compound units like pound-feet ), that is where I find metric more useful.
Also, I haven't read GP's post, but I find Fahrenheit degrees easier to work with primarily because they're smaller; differences in temperature are easier to express in whole numbers.
Gallons, cups, tablespoons, quarts can go DIAF; I have to convert between these all the time, and it drives me batty!
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#45>The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (who lived circa 276 to 194 B.C.) used a sexagesimal system to divide a circle into 60 parts in order to devise an early geographic system of latitude, with the horizontal lines running through well-known places on the earth at the time. A century later, Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude, making them parallel and obedient to the earth's geometry. He also devised a system of longitude lines that encompassed 360 degrees and that ran north to south, from pole to pole. In his treatise Almagest (circa A.D. 150), Claudius Ptolemy explained and expanded on Hipparchus' work by subdividing each of the 360 degrees of latitude and longitude into smaller segments. Each degree was divided into 60 parts, each of which was again subdivided into 60 smaller parts. The first division, partes minutae primae, or first minute, became known simply as the "minute." The second segmentation, partes minutae secundae, or "second minute," became known as the second.
This makes no sense. For this to be true, it implies that the ancient Greek already had knowledge that the Earth is round, 1600 years before Galileo.
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has nothing to do with how one day is divided, it's the calendar.
There was a proposition for a day of 10 hours, each having 100 minutes, each having 1000 seconds. And later, with the calendar came a simpler version with 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute, and so on (Article XI of the "Décret de la Convention Nationale concernant l'Ere des Français" [1]). It was only official (and mandatory) for a few months, however [2]. Edit: the one with 1M seconds a day was only an…
I wonder if that's an error, 10 hours, 100 minutes each, with each minute 1000 seconds would mean 1 million seconds a day. Further on the article says there are 100k such seconds a day though.
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#47And why are multiplication tables in school typically taught up to 12x12? Historically in the UK, there were 12 pence in a shilling, 240 pence in the pound, 12 inches in a foot, etc, but I'm not sure of the value nowadays.
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#48>The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (who lived circa 276 to 194 B.C.) used a sexagesimal system to divide a circle into 60 parts in order to devise an early geographic system of latitude, with the horizontal lines running through well-known places on the earth at the time. A century later, Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude, making them parallel and obedient to the earth's geometry. He also devised a system o…
It was theorised/known the Earth was round a lot earlier than Galileo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#49>The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (who lived circa 276 to 194 B.C.) used a sexagesimal system to divide a circle into 60 parts in order to devise an early geographic system of latitude, with the horizontal lines running through well-known places on the earth at the time. A century later, Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude, making them parallel and obedient to the earth's geometry. He also devised a system o…
Uh, what? They knew the earth was a sphere:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Measurement_of_th...
Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?
#50>The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (who lived circa 276 to 194 B.C.) used a sexagesimal system to divide a circle into 60 parts in order to devise an early geographic system of latitude, with the horizontal lines running through well-known places on the earth at the time. A century later, Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude, making them parallel and obedient to the earth's geometry. He also devised a system o…
The ancient greeks, among others, had that knowledge.
What makes no sense is the perpetuation of the myth that spherical earth is "new" concept.
The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/21/who-disco...