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Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#71

Post by icebraining »

drewblay wrote: post #53
spodek wrote: post #26

As 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…

>And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I agree, I like how Fahrenheit degrees are smaller and therefore degrees in Fahrenheit are more exact.

We just use decimal degrees, e.g. 23.5ºC.

That said, and as an European, if had to stop using one unit of measure it would certain be the Celsius scale.

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#72

Post by icebraining »

petercooper wrote: post #47

And 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.

Not here in Portugal, we only teach up to 10x10.

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#73

Post by dirktheman »

justwrote wrote: post #17

You can also find the duodecimal system in languages like English and German: ten, eleven, twelve | thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen zehn, elf, zwölf | dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn, sechzehn

Dutch too: tien, elf, twaalf | dertien, veertien, vijftien, zestien

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#74

Post by raldi »

rmk2 wrote: post #68
raldi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, people will claim it makes no sense that American M/D/Y dates are neither monotonically increasing nor decreasing, but then they'll find it totally natural to use "D/M/Y H:M:S" or "H:M:S D/M/Y" and not even notice that they share that same alleged flaw.

"They" really don't. Either way you described is still either sorted in ascending or descending order: H:M:S D/M/Y (321 123) or D/M/Y H:M:S (123 321), as opposed to using MDY, which is neither ascending nor descending, but 213. Additionally, the point of doing it the other way round is that the most important thing is on the left , where we start reading, followed by less important things. If I need to know the time…

> 321 123

I think you mean 321 456. It's not monotonically anything.

> most important thing is on the left

See, I feel that the month is the most important part of the date. "My birthday’s in June" or "My birthday is on the eight of some month"? "The harvest is in October" or "The harvest is on the 30th of something?"

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#75

Post by gourlaysama »

Aardwolf wrote: post #46
gourlaysama wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are completely right, I was confused by the first 1788 proposition. See edit.

Also, the weird thing was that, although they decided that an hour is divided in ten "parts", and each one of those in ten, and so one... they gave the name "minute" to the part of the part of the hour (so that 1 hour == 100 minutes), and the same for the second vs the minute.

I wonder how people managed to get a hang of this mess...

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#76

Post by riffraff »

smnrchrds wrote: post #65
eric_the_read wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I live in a country with metric system. We use different units of measurement interchangeably because it's easy to do so and we have gotten used to it. I am 1.74m or 174cm tall. The bus stop is 500m or half a kilometer away from my home, etc. While nobody converts 250km to meters, when the value is closer to one, both units of measurement are equally useful and equally used. Also all physics and engineering formula a…

Something I never thought about is that there are differences between metric countries too in usage.

E.g. in italy you refer to a glass of 200ml, 100 grams of pasta and two hectograms of parmigiano, while in hungary they routinely use deciliters and decagrams, which I'd never seen outside of school.

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#77

Post by brudgers »

12, 24, 60 are all used because they are cipherable using one's fingers.

To cipher on 12, pick a hand and assign the values 1 to 12 to each finger joint so that the tip of the index finger is one, the middle joint of the index finger is 2 ... the base joint of the little finger is twelve. Use the thumb as pointer to a number. Add and subtract by moving your thumb as you count.

Cipher on 24 by using each joint on both hands.

Cipher on 60 by using one hand to cipher on 12. The other to cipher on 5 in the traditional way but value each finger as 12. Example: Base joint of pinky on right hand and ring finger of left hand is 48.

To get the full Babylonian number system allow the exponent to float based on context. It's really just an extension of the move from ciphering on 12 to ciphering on 60.

Exercises:

1. [M05] Where are the indexes after adding 13 and 8?

2. [10] Change the system to use natural numbers.

3. [50] Is abandoning sexigisimal ciphering for decimal ciphering the oldest case of changing a computational system so as to make it easier for beginners at the expense of vastly reduced expressive power?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_number_system

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#78

Post by jonesetc »

eric_the_read wrote: post #44
edvinbesic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

It's really just the 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon that is annoying to remember. All of the others are just 2 or 4 of the one below it. A week and a restaurant and they start becoming quite natural.

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#79

Post by raldi »

spodek wrote: post #26

As 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…

Here's another example: One of this past weekend’s NFL games had a final score of 23 to 10. A nice, natural measurement that's easy to grasp.

But under the metric system, the score would have been 14.38 to -6. Completely awkward and out of touch with the human scale.

Re: Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?

#80

Post by DanBC »

eric_the_read wrote: post #44
edvinbesic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Cups are nice because it promotes a "feel" for cooking rather than treating it as a science where the recipe must be followed exactly.
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