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Metric Time

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Re: Metric Time

#111

Post by xyzzy123 »

eps wrote: post #109
vaughan wrote: post #102

.beat time or Swatch Internet Time is way better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

No, it's not. Dividing one day into just 1000 units is way less precise unless one uses decimals, in which case it's just plain inconvenient.

I think the idea is that for most human uses of time we don't specify start or end times to a precision of more than about 5 minutes. Stuff like train timetables you might want to go down to about a minute. So one could argue that we have at least 60 times the resolution we really need for day-to-day use.

If you absolutely need more precision (accurate timestamping) then decimals are available.

Re: Metric Time

#113

Post by Jleagle »

eps wrote: post #108
toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

Come to think of it, being able to cleanly divide a minute or an hour into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 equal parts is pretty damn handy.

Don't forget 10, 12, 15, 20, 30

Re: Metric Time

#114

Post by pmontra »

mjan22640 wrote: post #56
larusso wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right of course but also keep in mind that, and that is just my thoughts after reading, is that the French tried to implement decimal time along with the rest of what we call the metric system in the 18th century. And it was the only system people rejected. So I think the author named everything metric to make the point that if it would be part of the system a metric second would be … long. But again I could…

Every area had a mile that was a different lenght from the others. Time was the same everywhere already.

Time was the same for the people that were measuring it with the same tools.

Western sundials started with 12 hours as they worked only during the day [1] and people that were not measuring time eventually measured it with a 24 hours system.

I could not find many sources about Chinese sundials but from the pictures at [2] you can see that they had 12 hours in all the day. A hour on the second sundial is divided in 8 parts. The one in the first picture seems to have the same 8 characters as the other one but each hour is divided into 2 parts, each divided in 4 parts.

I'm not surprised that everybody settled around some small and convenient number. 12 has more factors than 10 and dividing by 2 is more convenient than dividing by 3. I would be surprised to find a 9 or a 15.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sundials

[2] https://sonofchina.com/what-is-a-sundial-and-how-does-it-wor...

Re: Metric Time

#115

Post by avinash »

trivialanalog wrote: post #100

Love it! I built something similar where the current day, week and year is displayed as elapsed percentages [0]. [0] https://trivialanalog.de/zeitfortschritt/

Cool. I would suggest to make it multilingual as the T, M and J labels are not easy to understand by those who don't speak German.

Re: Metric Time

#116

Post by pmontra »

To the author: the font is so thin that it exposes subpixel color artifacts on a 1080p 15" screen. I'd remove all the font-weight statements from CSS or set them to normal, except maybe for the one for H3.

Re: Metric Time

#117

Post by dan-robertson »

Fun metric time fact is that France conceded to Greenwich becoming the international prime meridian on the condition that the conference on the meridian also expressed a hope for a decimalised system of time (and angles). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Confere...

In the end they ended up not adopting the Greenwich meridian for quite some time afterwards.

Re: Metric Time

#118

Post by tomtomtom777 »

L3viathan wrote: post #91
toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

> Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of factors. While I agree in principle, this example is not evidence of it. It's not like we measured the amount of sleep needed and it's precisely 8 hours. A more reasonable thing to say would be: You need to sleep for 3.5 metric hours.

Exactly. The exact amount of sleep needed on average is almost certainly an irrational number. (Because almost every number is irrational)

Re: Metric Time

#119

Post by toxik »

Entalpi wrote: post #83
toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

Its like we have built our entire lives around another time system! /s You get similar problems converting between Freedom degrees and Celsius. Its just what people have built an understanding of.

I disagree, it’s not equal but different. The French famously tried to switch to a decimal system for angles before, but failed in no small part because of the relatively few unique prime factors. Being able to divide evenly by three turns out to be more important than five.

Re: Metric Time

#120

Post by Karellen »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #118
L3viathan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of factors. While I agree in principle, this example is not evidence of it. It's not like we measured the amount of sleep needed and it's precisely 8 hours. A more reasonable thing to say would be: You need to sleep for 3.5 metric hours.

Exactly. The exact amount of sleep needed on average is almost certainly an irrational number. (Because almost every number is irrational)

Are you sure? Isn't the average calculated by dividing by n, an integer?

Edit: I mean, you're right that nearly every number is irrational. But I think averages are going to be some of the tiny fraction of numbers that aren't.

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