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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?

#131

Post by Someone »

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…

"to within about a percent a year is pi times ten to the seventh"

The way to remember that is "pi seconds in a nanocentury"

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

#132

Post by Someone »

dragontamer wrote: post #110
qbrass wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about scaling instants up to a year? A kiloday would be 2.74 years. Which doesn't seem to mean anything in human terms.

All of the english system measurements were built on "human" terms. A furlong is the distance a horse can plow in one day. This also gives a relationship between horsepower and furlongs. A chain is the distance you keep crops apart, and one chain by one furlong is an acre. If you had 20 acres of land, you knew a horse could plow the land in 20 days. The aging English system of Feet, Yards, Furlongs, Miles, Rods, Chai…

Nitpick: horsepower is not an old English unit; James Watt invented it in the late 18th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower)

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

#133

Post by jordan0day »

phlo wrote: post #114
raldi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whereas quite often you'll need to know how long it’s going to take to drive to a city 90 miles away, and it's quite convenient to use the "1 mile ~= 1 minute" approximation to estimate that it'll take 90 minutes.

And this is where metric really shines: at Autobahn speed (130 kph), 90 miles is only some 66 minutes -- 24 minutes saved over imperial. :)

Finally, a convincing argument for the metric system! It will shorten our commutes!

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

#134

Post by Crito »

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…

It is the non-metric units for volume that really turn into a shitfest.

I grew up in America, went to public schools, learned to cook from American cookbooks, and still can't keep all of them straight.

Pints in a gallon? Quarts in a gallon? Quarts in a pint? Teaspoons in a cup? Cups in a pint? Who fucking knows? The best I can do is a pint is roughly how much beer you get at a bar (but that changes from region to region!) and milk comes in a gallon while other beverages do not.

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

#135

Post by dsego »

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…

A funny rant on imperial units you might find amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7x-RGfd0Yk

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

#137

Post by headbiznatch »

Fun topic which inspires me to mention two goodies that help fuel in-depth conversations about measurement and conversion:

1) The Measure of All Things - http://www.kenalder.com/measure/ (science history goodness)

2) Frink - http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ (one of my first discoveries on HN and still one of the most fun to return to)

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

#138

Post by Crito »

dragontamer wrote: post #110
qbrass wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about scaling instants up to a year? A kiloday would be 2.74 years. Which doesn't seem to mean anything in human terms.

All of the english system measurements were built on "human" terms. A furlong is the distance a horse can plow in one day. This also gives a relationship between horsepower and furlongs. A chain is the distance you keep crops apart, and one chain by one furlong is an acre. If you had 20 acres of land, you knew a horse could plow the land in 20 days. The aging English system of Feet, Yards, Furlongs, Miles, Rods, Chai…

I doubt most people understand or think of "Point" as a measure of length. It is just some completely arbitrary scalar that exists only due to poor UI design and so that teachers can mark off points for it not being set to "12". In many other cases, such as modern web browsers, it is being replaced with the concept of "zoom" which just uses natural numbers with "100" being arbitrarily defined as some loose concept of "default".

They would certainly never dream of using it for anything other than choosing how large they wanted their font, or possibly line.

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

#139

Post by dsego »

mVChr wrote: post #116

> Interestingly, in order to keep atomic time in agreement with astronomical time, leap seconds occasionally must be added to UTC. Thus, not all minutes contain 60 seconds. A few rare minutes, occurring at a rate of about eight per decade, actually contain 61. And thus, the programmer's nightmare begins...

The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY&feature=share

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

#140

Post by achy »

riffraff wrote: post #76
smnrchrds wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is exactly why metric is so powerful: I also have no inherent concept of a deciliter or decagram, but I can convert to my understood liter and kilogram in moments.
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