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Best case for metric time
You might have confused metric time (which is basically just seconds, the SI unit for measuring time) with decimal time, a way of keeping time that’s more in line with the base-10 numbering system.
(Yes I found out about this just now)
🫡 thx xD
You mean Swatch Internet Time?
Beat me to it. See what I did there… @469
Honestly a great case for "I have no idea why we chosen 60 as a random ass base for time "
Also im aware that base is not the proper term in this case since the base is still 10, but I have not idea how you would call the switch to the bigger unit treshhold
I’ve always assumed it’s because of the usefulness in its divisibility, with 60 able to be subdivided evenly in halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, and sixths, and because 24 is just 12x2 and 60 is just 12x5, that remains the case (save for fifths) for all subdivisions of the day in its 60/60/24 configuration.
My guess is that it’s simply an issue of working with something like a day, defined by cosmic forces rather than human sensibilities or control, where you don’t always get something that can be decimalized and still have useful units of time. I’ve done zero research on the actual reason, though, so that’s just a guess.
That’s essentially the correct answer:
Oooh Sexagesimal. That’s hot.
Don’t look at me while I’m learning about sexagesimals
Also why a circle is 360, lots whole number divisors.
There was an attempt to convert to decimal and use 100 minutes in an hour, but this failed and it was reverted back. https://somethingmarvelousblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/the-best-of-time-the-worst-of-time-the-failed-french-experiment-of-decimal-time/
There was also a great proposal to use kiloseconds.
We already use 15 minutes (16.67 minutes = 1ksec) a lot in regular speech. My language has a word for it (kvarter) which is used all the time.
There used to be cool website listing all the benefits but it’s been down for a few years :(
I’m assuming your language’s word for it comes from “quarter” meaning a forth of the total. In this case the total being an hour.
People like give shit to the US for not using the metric system (“you have 12 inches in a foot and 5,280 feet in a mile? how do you even remember that?”) but see no irony in using a random ass base for time (“it’s easy you just have 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day.”)
I actually developed a metric time for that reason, alongside with an International Fixed Calendar using the Holocene Era. It works on a libreoffice spreadsheet. The calendar itself isn’t metric, but it’s highly regular, and that makes it nice imo. The spreadsheet auto-updates the time once you edit the spreadsheet (put random character somewhere, remove). But I sadly don’t know how to put that on a working site or whatever, or as software…
I picked the Holocene Era because it’s globally actually relevant, and it’s not tied to a controversial figure (2026 being tied to Christ).
Basically, it’s right now, according to my calendar:
Year: 11’726
Month: 1
Week: 2
Day of year: 12Hour: 8
Minute: 1
How does the calendar work?
There are 364 days in a year. There are 13 months of 28 days each, divided in weeks of 7 days. There are two additional days, New Year’s Eve and Leap Day. They don’t belong to any day of the week. (Religious groups that object, can just have an extra day of prayer, or use their own calendar). The extra month can be called Midsummer, or Solsticy. (Or just name the months “first, second month” and days likewise).
The first day after New Year’s Eve is the first day that days lengthen again in the North. That day will always be a Monday, starting the year proper.
How does the day work?
There are 100’000 seconds (instead of 86,400).
There are 10’000 tenths.
There are 1’000 minutes.
There are 100 quarters.
There are 10 hours.
And that is 1 day.Left is new unit, right their old equivalent:
second: 0.864 old second
tenth: 8.64 old seconds
minute: 1.44 old minute (1 min, 26.4 sec)
quarter: 14.4 old minutes (14 min, 24 sec)
hour: 2.4 old hours (2 hr, 24 min)It works out relatively niftily, to be honest.
I’m always looking for a fun little project, I could dev that into a desktop app or website if you wanted.
Yes to the days of the year - only sensible way to do it. Added bonus that the first day of each month is always a Monday, which makes it easy to calculate days-of-week in your head. Also, two days holiday at new year every leap year, yeah.
Metric seconds is a bit trickier. Most units of measurement have ‘time’ in them in some way.
The SI is obviously that way - length is defined as metres per second of light in vacuum, mass by fixing the Planck constant in kilogram metres squared per second. But Imperial units, besides the fact that they’re usually defined in law in terms of the SI, also have a lot of their derived units include time - mph and psi for instance.
Unless you’re wanting to redefine basically every unit of measurement in your new system, then you need to stick with the second, which means you’re stuck with ~86400 seconds per day, because that’s how fast the world turns, and there’s no particularly better way to subdivide it.
Although if your new calendar could also fix the damned mess that is time zones at the same time, I’d be willing to give it a shot.
It comes from the ancient Summerians (through the not-quite-as-ancient Babylonians) directly from their use of base 60 (for some things - they used 10 and 12 for others). So I think you’re good.
The base 12 comes from the number of divisions from your fingers, minus the thumb: you can count to 12 on each hand :D
According to this article it comes from the first sundials used by the ancient Egyptians which divided the day up into 12 equal parts and then the night being divided up into 12 equal parts from the movement of 12 particular stars.
The the Babylonians were the ones who divided those 24 hours up into 60s thanks to their numbering system being base 60.
And then it just sort of stuck? The only large scale attempt to shift to a different numbering system for time and dates was in revolutionary France but it never really expanded beyond that and once the railways and telegraph required a standardised system of time internationally and things became fixed where we are now.
so did they assume a colon was I between those? like this
1:20instead of120?if not, the microwave probably either has a bad display, is is badly programmed… or im missing something.
It’s just the way microwaves are programmed. Same reason 99 cooks longer than 100. It interprets a 100, 200, etc as minutes. I think most microwaves handle anything over 100 as minute + seconds, treating it like it had a : in there.
Well, on a more serious note, it is odd that some microwaves let you type in
90and time down from “90” instead of “1:30”. I should type in something like190and see what it does. My bet is it only does the weird seconds format when it’s 99 seconds or less. Because obviously100would be a minute, not 100 seconds.Honestly it’s a nice feature.
I have a thing that takes 45 seconds to warm. I take two of them, type in 90 and it just works!
Of course that breaks down if I take four of them and type in 180, but meh. Worst case is that it’ll be a little cold.
Well hold your horses, why does heating up two take exactly twice as long? Your microwave heats everything inside. I can understand it being longer, but exactly twice as long? Hmmm… I think we need more data.
why does heating up two take exactly twice as long?
A microwave works by exciting the water molecules in an object. They start to vibrate from the microwave energy hitting it, and vibrating molecules is what heat is. The microwave energy mostly bounces around inside the metal microwave until it hits something that has water (which is why you should never turn it on empty), so it doesn’t really get wasted.
So, if you put twice as much stuff inside, it will take twice as much energy to heat it to the same temperature, so at the same setting it will take twice as much time.
If you want to get nitpicky, it will require very slightly over twice as long, because by needing more time to warm up, it will give off more energy to the air around it, so you need to compensate. But the question of “how much will my food cool down in 90 seconds compared to 45 seconds” should be answered by “shut up dude” and not with a number.
I used to have an old digital 24h clock and one time I was watching close to midnight. It went from 23:58 to 23:59, then a minute later 24:00 blinked for a second before it went to 0:00.
ISO-8601 has some cases where 24:00 is allowed in place of 0:00, or at least it used to. Maybe new editions removed it.
Sure, but not for one second before reconsidering. That was some weird jank in the way the clock was put together.
Microwaves basically always assume leading zeros so microwaves are ALWAYS in 00:00 format no matter what’s displayed.
So 90 is 00:90, and the max it can do is 99:99 the moment you realize this everything makes perfect sense why they act that way.
And despite all this, Remmy P. can still form babby.
(And vote. And drive a car, keep and bear a firearm, etc.)
Scary.
No, it’s not.
Scary is the guy who can form babby, and drive and own a gun, who is also absolutely and completely convinced that they are right about everything.
Remmy P is not the problem, because Remmy P encountered a situation where their poor information didn’t mesh with reality and immediately stopped and asked for help. Remmy P is learning. Remmy P recognizes their ignorance.
There are people with PhDs who do not have this basic life skill.
Those people scare me. Remmy P just needs a little help.
Remember, everyone is a fucking idiot sometimes. Even (especially) smart people.
You know what, that’s a fair point. It does take some humility to be able to admit that one might be wrong. And it seems like that kind of humility is somewhat hard to come by these days.
I mean everything is hard if you’ve never learned it
More people to understand and internalize this idea.
There’s nothing wrong with ignorance. It’s refusing to recognize and correct ignorance that’s the problem.
Around eighteen years ago I linked a Yahoo! question to a then friend of mine. He said “I love Yahoo! Answers, trolls trolling trolls.”
Not sure why this comes to mind at the moment …
my dyscalculia is dyscalculating (again)
120 seconds is not 1 minute 20…
Yes it is? Did you read the post above?
Any other 99 second homies up in here?
I microwave in multiples of 11 (up to 99) because I figure hitting the same button twice is slightly faster than finding the 0 button.
I press the start button a few times to add increments of 60
And it takes a second or so before the magnetron starts generating energy.
We’re through the looking glass here, people.
ok seriously what kind of microwave does everyone have? none i’ve ever used had a builtin calculator that let you add 60 to 60
the only thing i’ve ever seen that was addable was +30 on the turn on button, and that one when pressed twice always adds a minute
