61–70 of 343 posts
Maybe once we have left the Earth and spread out into the solar system and beyond, there will be no reason to keep Earth time, and we'll just use Unix time, and stick to seconds, kiloseconds, and megaseconds. (Hopefully in the next few gigaseconds.)
Does this short page describing a base-10 way of dividing time actually fail to be internally consistent for the few sentences of text describing it? > A standard hour is broken into 60 minutes. There are 2.4 standard hours in 1 metric hour. > A metric minute is broken into 100 seconds. > A standard minute has 60 seconds. There are 2.4 standard minutes in 1 metric minute. No, a standard minute is 1/1440 of a day, and…
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?
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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.
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FTFY: English does not need a second conflicting definition for the second.
There is no conflicting definition. Minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths etc. are sexagesimal subdivisions, as tenths, hundreds, thousandths, ten thiusandths etc. are for decimal.
I'm really fascinated by such ideas. However, it's just academic as time is so much baked into physical devices (watches, clocks, ...) so this will most probably never happen. I'd rather start redoing the calendar. It doesn't need to be metric but the different lengths of the months (and the naming Oct. should be 8 not 10?) could be reworked.
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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…
I don’t know the exact history, but the rest of the metric system is designed with a base unit and decimal derivatives. Assuming we want to keep the day length consistent (I can’t imagine a system being practically useful otherwise), we’d have decidays, centidays, etc. and not have hours, minutes, and seconds in the system at all. A system with days, decidays (2.4 hours), millidays (1.44 minutes), and microdays (0.08…
You could call this lots of things, but you shouldn’t call it “metric” because its second is not a metric second. In the SI (metric) system, the second is one of the fundamental units. The world does not need a conflicting definition for the second. As someone who’s implemented a date and time library, the real pain is in dates, leap seconds and time zone transitions. 86,400 seconds in a day is a relative piece of ca…
FTFY: English does not need a second conflicting definition for the second.
The actual word is "second minute" (as opposed to the "first minute").
Most languages have by now elided "first" from "first minute" resulting in the "minute" as we know it today, and elided "minute" from "second minute" resulting in the "second" as we know it today.
i.e. "second" literally means "the one that comes after the first", but is implied to be about the subdivision of the small unit of time.
I'm confused by this page, the standard clock is in my timezone (CEST, UTC+2). Is the metric clock also set to this standard, i.e does 00:00:00 in that clock occur at 22:00:00 UTC?