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Metric Time

metric-time.com

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Re: Metric Time

#151

Post by kybernetikos »

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/

My version also removes timezones. The numeric time is the same whereever you are in the world, but the display changes based on your location so that local solar midday is straight up on the clock face and local solar midnight is straight down on the clock face. Day and night hours are drawn on the face.

I used to have it attach to your google calendar and draw meetings onto the clock face too, but I think in the last 11 years the google calendar api has changed and I haven't updated it.

Obviously once you have metric time, you need a metric week too, so I have new week days: nullday, unday, duoday, triday, quadday, hexday heptday, octday and nonday. There's no need for months anymore, I just number the weeks. Of course 28th Quadday is the 285th day in the year, as the first day is 0th Nullday. Fixing the number of weeks in a year to a round number is left as an exercise for the reader.

Time and date maths becomes very simple.

Re: Metric Time

#152

Post by s0teri0s »

JR1427 wrote: post #129
s0teri0s wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, no mention of the need for only 10 big-ass time zones instead of 24 relatively narrow time zones. The continental US might have only 2 time zones instead of 4.

Why is having fewer time zones a good thing? Wouldn't this actually be confusing, because things would have to be happening at different local times depending on where you are in the time zone?

I wasn't really advocating for it, I just think if we were crazy enough to adopt this time system, 10 time zones would also be a necessary adjustment.

Re: Metric Time

#153

Post by roelschroeven »

edent wrote: post #7

Personally, I prefer 100 metric hours in a day. Each centiday is about 15 minutes. Each milliday is about 90 seconds. And a microday is slightly shorter than a second. But, sadly, this revolution won't occur until after I'm elected God-Emperor of Mars, so it is all rather academic.

So a microday is 1/100 of a milliday? That clashes with the SI prefixes, where micro is 1/1000 of milli.

When following SI, a microday would be 0.0864 (or approximately 0.1 second) which doesn't seem to be a very practical unit.

Re: Metric Time

#154

Post by bmacho »

mongol wrote: post #71
stereoabuse wrote: post #4

Usually known as decimal time[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

Definitely a better name

Metric time is a better name, since it states that this time comes naturally from our common metric system, and something is very very off that we don't use it.

Re: Metric Time

#155

Post by roelschroeven »

simonh wrote: post #62
INTPenis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how a metric day matches up with a standard day. I flunked 10th grade math and later dropped out, my brain is having a stroke just reading those graphs. I reverted back to seconds, which is how I used to use Unix timestamps when I first started with computers. But one day would have 100000 seconds, compared to 86400 seconds in standard time, so how can they both measure a day?

Seconds, minutes and hours in this system are not the same length as the standard versions.

I feel it's an error to use the same names in the two systems. The values are different, it would be much less confusing to use names that are clearly different too.

Re: Metric Time

#156

Post by scroot »

shiroiuma wrote: post #85
0wis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a very confusing error. The metric time is the SI time (24h 60m 60s). The decimal time is base 10. French tried to get it used during the revolution and it did not work. Its the only unit that resisted decimalization, with a couple others ones in a handful of countries still using something called « imperial units ». Another similar thought experiment is binary clocks which I remember using to get use to read in…

>with a couple others ones in a handful of countries still using something called « imperial units ». The only country I know of offhand that uses "imperial units" is the UK. There's a different, but similar (and sometimes overlapping) system called "US Customary Units" that's used in the US. Imperial pints and gallons are NOT the same as US pints and gallons.

the UK pint is bigger than the US pint. Know this before visiting and it could just save you a hangover.

Re: Metric Time

#157

Post by bmacho »

I always had the feeling that I'd love decimal time, but seeing it on a clock, I absolutely love it. Especially that it is called metric time, since it is not just decimal, but it is the natural time system in our metric system, which we doesn't use bc of inertia, but that can and should change.

Re: Metric Time

#158

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

red_trumpet wrote: post #135
Karellen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only if you take an average of rational numbers. Like e/2 is still irrational.

While in theory you could measure sleeping time in fractions of 2 pi, I'd guess that you're using rational numbers in the actual calculation anyways.

Re: Metric Time

#159

Post by jonwinstanley »

This is cool. However, for me, it's the months that are the weirdest issue. Why do we all get paid the same each month, pay the same rent/mortgage but some months have 4 weekends, some have 5.

We should have 13 months, all 28 days long, exactly 4 weeks. Whenever there's a leap year we get an extra day for free.

:-)

Re: Metric Time

#160

Post by bmacho »

mirekrusin wrote: post #79
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…

We need tau-rational-time! We sleep for τ/3, noon is at π.

An hour is just an another name for a deciturn, or a deciday.

Tau is not a good unit for angles in general, unless you have circles, or you need lengths of circumferences somewhere. (You want to paint your clock and calculate the amount of paint, or something.) Turn is the natural angle unit. And since the earth rotates 1 turn/day, the amount of turns is the same as the amount of days.

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