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Decimalising date & time
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
I thought I'd break up the current affairs with a hypothetical question. Could we have 10 hours in a day and 100 minutes per hour? Could we have 10 months in a year? Because 365 can't go into denary, we could still have the 10 months but each month would have to have 36 or 37 days (5 x 36 + 3 x 37 = 365), then a leap day to account for the 365.25.
Thoughts? :-)
Thoughts? :-)
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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lol.
If we decimalised time we'd end up with about 18 hours or something at the end of our 565th day. I can't see it working tbh.
Our time is the way it is because it follows the course of the sun and the earth.
I did a brief read up on this as the topic sounded quite interesting, and apparently the French tried to do this circa 1795 but the problem was that all the sea charts, all the clocks, everything was already in the current system and it was difficult to change it. They also advocated having 10 days a week, with a midweek holiday (something it seems they held onto
In computing, time is just a number. It is the number of seconds (and bear in mind a second is a fixed constant in the universe, something to do with atoms) since 1st January 1970. Also, in science experiments, they will record things often in terms of seconds etc rather than saying "12.15, 12.25" etc.
So it wouldnt affect those who use time in a very technical way, because they already have sophisticated systems in place to make it easier to do whatever they want to.
However, for those who use it in normal use, its actually really convenient for the division of time.
Say time was just a decimal number, 0 = 00:00, and tends to 1 at 24:00. So 12 midday would be 0.5, 12.30 would be 0.521, 1:00 would be 0.542 etc. now I think that actually makes it more complicated. Because 10 isn't as divisible as either 60 or 24 it actually makes it harder to state a time easily.
10 minutes = one sixth of an hour
15 minutes = one quarter of an hour
20 minutes = one third of an hour
30 minutes = one half of an hour
so you can break up time very nicely quite easily. I think personally if we could rewrite the history books, we could count in base 12, and we'd all be happier for it. The only thing that would be more difficult is fifths but they're not as common as thirds or quarters anyway.
Unless the remix would be "I've got 0.35 minutes to go"
You are not misreading, you are correct, it is all part of a big ploy to distract us from the fact that its really 1984.
Hey man, I don't think you should worry too much about the responses - this is a place for people to discuss issues, which does mean not necessarily agreeing with them. But it's a nice thread to have around rather than more politically focused discussions.
:yes: