Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why would sleeping time be a fraction of 2pi? > I'd guess that you're using rational numbers in the actual calculation anyways. Well, actually one uses floating point arithmetic, which isn't rational numbers either (as shown by the classic example a = 1/3, b = 3*a, then b != a)
Metric Time
201–210 of 343 posts
Re: Metric Time
#202> A metric minute is broken into 100 seconds. > A standard minute has 60 seconds. There are 2.4 standard minutes in 1 metric minute. Surely it should be 1.(6). I hope they didn’t change the definition of a second. It’s an SI unit.
> It’s an SI unit. There is really nothing scientific about time as we mortals use it. As soon as you bind the definition of time to the rotation of the earth, all bets are off about being "scientific". A day has x hours. An hour has y minutes. A minute has z seconds. Therefore, you have now defined a second as 1 / (x times y times z) What happens when the earth speeds up by a fraction of a second? Does the definitio…
Second is not bound to the rotation of the Earth. It’s bound to the speed of light (indirectly).
Re: Metric Time
#203Lol, this was EXACTLY my high school sr. year social studies project in 1980, with roughly the same effort (sadly, I didn't create a working clock). I won first place, with just this. The only difference is I named the metric units 'mints.'
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.
Nothing says that time zones have to align on even hours. They don't today - look at India for example.
Re: Metric Time
#204I'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…
Simple and useless. You can have any system you want for your personal use, but clocks and calendars are for colaboration. It's nice that you have day and night hours on the clock where you are. No you will travel a few thousand kilometers. You know your decimal time you get there, do you know whether it will be daytime or nighttime? You get there, and it is winter and the dark time is 3x of the daytime. Have you got any idea when anything opens and closes?
And why have weeks if you don't have months. How about just numbered days?
Re: Metric Time
#205sadly few centuries too late.
Re: Metric Time
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't check the details of that metric time system but there would be no problem living a 10 hours day with 100 minutes hours and 100 seconds minutes. The second would be defined with a different number of "cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium-133 atom" and that's all. Instead of rounding our lives at "our" quarters of hours or ten minutes, five minutes marks we would…
Nobody questions the logical consistency of the system, I think. Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10. Think about it. A tenth of a standard hour is 6 standard minutes. A tenth of a metric hour is 144 standard minutes, more than two standard hours. A hundredth of a standard hour is 36 standard seconds, or half a minute. It is in the context of h…
Don't we have the same basic criticism going from Fahrenheit to Celsius? You go from a 10 degree swing being big to ridiculously huge.
That is, arbitrary number is arbitrary, at large. Most of the "benefits" of any system won't actually be realized by most people that are using it. Consistency, on the other hand, is hugely important.
Re: Metric Time
#207Re: Metric Time
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
A day is a day, Earth rotation defines it. What we can do is decide how long a second is and tweak it to make a day 100k seconds long or 86.4k ones.
If only the length of a day was constant. It's not, hence leap second corrections to our current earth based imprecise observed solar time based on mean solar days (which are not apparent solar days). Of course even if it were regular there's that pesky difference in rotation relative to what now?? Sidereal rotation time isn't equal to solar rotation time (mean or apparent). Time .. less straightforward than most ima…
> Time .. less straightforward than most imagine.
I think it's more trying to make things which vary fit in a "you shall not vary" square box that is the problem. Technically, this metric/decimal method makes more sense for what we're trying to do, but it's less of a "time" thing than it is a "let's have the same numbers every day so we can agree on when synchronous events need to happen." To _measure_ elapsed time, using a fixed unit such as a second is perfectly fine.
Re: Metric Time
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't check the details of that metric time system but there would be no problem living a 10 hours day with 100 minutes hours and 100 seconds minutes. The second would be defined with a different number of "cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium-133 atom" and that's all. Instead of rounding our lives at "our" quarters of hours or ten minutes, five minutes marks we would…
Nobody questions the logical consistency of the system, I think. Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10. Think about it. A tenth of a standard hour is 6 standard minutes. A tenth of a metric hour is 144 standard minutes, more than two standard hours. A hundredth of a standard hour is 36 standard seconds, or half a minute. It is in the context of h…
>Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10.
>Think about it.
No, YOU think about it. When do you use hour-only precision today ?
When you say "I have meeting at 8" that never means "any time period between 8 and 9", that means "it starts at eight". That doesn't change with change of the length of the hour.
You'd still use hours on their own only if you mean "an hour and close to zero minutes around that hour". You'd still add minutes for anything else.
> A hundredth of a metric hour is 14.4 standard minutes! Imagine being 0.01 metric hours late for a meeting.
...no ? it's 100 seconds so ~1.66 of standard minute
Imagine being 1.66 minutes late instead of one!!! Such horror!
Re: Metric Time
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody questions the logical consistency of the system, I think. Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10. Think about it. A tenth of a standard hour is 6 standard minutes. A tenth of a metric hour is 144 standard minutes, more than two standard hours. A hundredth of a standard hour is 36 standard seconds, or half a minute. It is in the context of h…
Don't we have the same basic criticism going from Fahrenheit to Celsius? You go from a 10 degree swing being big to ridiculously huge. That is, arbitrary number is arbitrary, at large. Most of the "benefits" of any system won't actually be realized by most people that are using it. Consistency, on the other hand, is hugely important.
> Don't we have the same basic criticism going from Fahrenheit to Celsius?
Sure, and one shouldn’t do that either. Fahrenheit’s range (0 being the freezing point of brine, almost but not quite intolerable to a human, and 100 being roughly body temperate and also almost but not quite intolerable to a human) is far more human than Celsius’s freezing-to-boiling range.