Isn't it Time for Metric Time?

xenocytekron writes: "Sure, our time system is ok, but does it make sense? Is it easy? Think about it: 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year. Currently, all the world uses the Metric System except for the US. But what about Time? The solution is Metric Time, that is, a time system which uses Base-10 and Metric Standards. So what do you think: Is it Time, for Metric Time?"

already ./ed

[bohnsack]

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Google cache is here [216.239.33.100]

Ob Google cache

[alienmole]

Slashdotted already? Here's the Google cache [216.239.33.100] of the page.

Time

[Wyatt Earp]

Yes, the current system of time makes sense.

The time system in current use is a standard that the SI has signed off on, so it is Metric Time.

Actually, there is absolutly no reason to revamp how the global standards for time keeping are operated.

Good page about time history.
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/time .html

Here are Yahoo links to the page about alternative schemes.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Measurements_and_Un it s/Time/Alternative_Schemes/

base 60 makes more sense

[thoth_amon]

...because 60 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. So dividing the day into 60 hours, each of which contains 60 minutes, and each minute of which contains 60 seconds, would probably be more convenient.

Re:25 Hours in a day?

[SpatchMonkey]

An extra hour would be nice, but sometimes it is just a few seconds more [navy.mil].

Re:Gone already?!?

[iamplasma]

Then use the good old google cache - http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:r9MHgtv93-YC: zapatopi.net/metrictime.html+=en=UTF-8

Re:25 Hours?

[suwain_2]

While there's a 99.9% chance that the "25 hours" figure was a typo, it reminded me of an interesting factoid I've seen before...

The human body's "biorhythms" are apparently based on a 25-hour cycle. Now that I'm actually looking for it, I can't find any links to the research, but perhaps someone more "in the know" can provide this information, as I'm positive that I didn't imagine this fact. There've been some really interesting studies done on this and sleep, I wish I could find the link. (I suppose chances are slim that anyone else would happen to have bookmarked a URL for something about 25 hour biorhythms and sleep?) Can anyone help me out here?

Re:Funny topic,

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying to have thousands upon thousands of miles of road remarked with new signs would be prohibitively expensive.

Yeah, but it would probably cost half as much as that Mars Orbiter that crashed cause because someone screwed up [slashdot.org] the conversion.

The funny thing is....

[os2fan]

That the 24 hour day is an Egyptian invention, based on a decimaldivision of the "day" + morning + twilight + the rising of 12 of their 36 signs. The 36 signs relate to their 10 day week.

The division into 60 is a Sumerian system, but their native system is to divide the day into powers of 60.

The uniform hours divided by base 60 is a Greek invention. The Romans divided the hour into 12 uncia. [The romans used weight-fractions: the unit = 1 libra: therefore a scruple of time is 12 1/2 seconds = 1/288 hour]

The metric system was meant to replace the angle and the length with a decimally divided quadrant: so it would be appropriate to divide the quarter day likewise. It makes some sense to do it like this.

Of course, you can consistantly divide the circle, day, and circumference into any system. Eg I use a circle divided into powers of 120, a nautical system of a marinal (9120 ft) of 120 segments (76 ft). This is the 'minute' and 'second' of the base 120 system. The day is divided into 12 hours of 120 min of 120 seconds

You can use other divisions as well, eg a decimally divided circle.

One thing I keep in mind is the clock division. In our clock, the hours use the major markings, which serve as multiples of the minute. So you could, in something like base 14, use a day divided into 16 hours of 56 minutes a peice. The clock is divided into hour-octants, each of sevenths.

Re:25 Hours?

[LinuxHam]

I should have done this first, but Google for "25 hour day".. i think the quotes are significant to the search. A front page hit is this [harvard.edu] article from Harvard. The next hit [att.net] says the brain's day is 24 hours, 11 minutes long, not the 25 hours earlier studies concluded.

You can read the rest [google.com] of the Google hits.

Absolutely not

[Brigadoon]

While I agree that 60, 60, 24 isn't the most easy thing, it has been done far longer than would be easy to switch. FYI, the whole sets of 60 came from the Babylonians (which is also where we get 360 degrees in a circle). By the way, I don't see anyone trying to get the world to go to gradians (100 grads per quarter circle instead of 90 degrees).

But anyways, I'll bite. Why not go to a "metric time"? Here's why: the entire metric system is based on other parts of the metric system. What is a milliliter? Yes, it's 1/1000th of a Liter, but it's also one centimeter cubed. It's also based on water: one cubic centimeter of (pure) water is one gram. (Here's a hint: this is where mass comes from). But where do we get distances? The meter is derived from the SECOND. Translation: the second _IS_ metric. If you try and introduce a "metric time," it will most definately _NOT_ integrate with the metric system as we know it, and it will seriously mess up any hopes of getting a stardard in science and engineering - at least in the US. The rest of the world has it nailed, except us. What's the Earth's gravitational acceleration at sea level? about 32 feet/sec^2 (imperial) or 9.8 meters/sec^2. You change the second (or introduce a new replacement), and this value, which is very well known to physicists and engineers, you're going to mess everything up.

Force, mass, pressure, acceleration, etc. would all be skewed when trying to go to some "decimal" time system.

This is another reason why this "Internet time" nonsense will (should) never catch on. It's not going to help the world in any way. Not possible.

-Xyphoid

Re:25 Hours?

[Jerf]

Reminds me of an obscure and strange sci-fi-ish novella Where were you last Pluterday? [sulinet.hu], based (sort of) on the idea that the rich and powerful can buy their way into an eight day of the week, which only they experience... wierd book, and that's not the only reason... worth picking up on the chance in heck you find a copy.

already tried it

[clovis]

When the French first tried to impose the metric system on its own population, there was significant resistance - particularly among tradesman. The ever-efficient French simply applied the death penalty for a tradesman to own a non-metric measuring tool. Catch your builder owning a yardstick meant you didn't have to pay the bill, if you get my drift, so pretty soon the metric system caught on.

Even so, the metric time was so universally ignored that the government had to choose between dropping the time requirement or depopulating the continent.
And this was at a time when hardly anyone even had a clock.

The reason for 24 hours

[WG55]

The reason we have twenty-four hours in a day has to do with basic trigonometry. The ancient Greeks were able to find algebraic expressions for the sine and cosine of 30 degrees and 45 degrees, and the equations for the sines and cosines of differences are:

• sin ( A +- B ) = sin A cos B +- cos A sin B
• cos ( A +- B ) = cos A cos B -+ sin A sin B

So one can find the algebraic expressions for the sine and cosine of 15 degrees by using the above equations. (This is left as an exercise to the reader.) So 15 degrees is the smallest whole number interval (in degrees) with an algebraic expression for the sine and cosine, and 360 divided by 15 is 24. Therefore, one hour is the amount of time for the earth to rotate through 15 degrees of arc.

Source: Ptolemy's Almagest

Re:Funny topic,

[bakes]

It's not necessarily superior, but I would put forward that it's easier to learn.

3 feet to a yard, 22 yards to a chain, 1760 yards to a mile, etc.

10 mm to a cm, 100 cm to a metre, 1000 metres to a kilometre

The numbers are easier to remember. The pound and yard seem just as arbitrary as a kilogram or metre do. It's as easy to learn (hold hands up) 'this is about a yard' as it is (hold hands a little further apart) 'this is about a metre'.

Base 10 vs. Base 12

[Rui del-Negro]

We use base 10 because we were born with 10 fingers. But that doesn't make it the "best" numeric base. In fact, base 12 has a lot of advantages over base 10. 10 can only be divided by 5 and 2. 12 can be divided by 6, 4, 3 and 2.

Time is based on bases 24 and 60, which are multiples of 12. It's easy to count exacly half a day (12 hours), one third of a day (8 hours) and one quarter of a day (6 hours). The happen to correspond (roughly) to day / night, awake / asleep and morning / day / afternoon / night, which are "important" periods from a biological & natural point of view. Same goes for years (if a year had 10 months, each season would be 2.5 months long, and seasons are not quite as "artificial" as they may seem).

Here are a couple of pages about base 12:

DGSB [orbix.co.uk]

StudyWorks [studyworksonline.com]

Of course, changing everything from base 10 to base 12 would be more trouble than it's worth, but there's no reason to "downgrade" the way we count time just to comply with a "rule" that exists only because some people count by their fingers. I suppose men could learn to use base 11 with a bit of training... :-]

The main problem with the way we keep time is converting quickly (mentally) between seconds, minutes and hours. But the solution is pretty simple: always work in seconds (the SI unit).

P.S. - In fact, it's possible to count up to 32 using just one hand (think binary), but I've never met anyone who does it intuitively.

RMN
~~~

Re:Funny topic,

[Scrameustache]

I think people in the US don't want to switch because there is no advantage to a switch. Really, what would the point be? There are 260 million people happy with the current system, why should they switch?


This would be the point [colostate.edu]

iso-8601

[coyote-san]

IIRC, ISO-8601 is the spec for dates and times. It's 2002-07-04, or 2002W264 (if you prefer week numbers and days-of-week, plus variants for Julian days (not Julian Dates, which are entirely different), etc.

Most people who have tried it quickly like it. It's also trivial to sort dates without special logic.

Unfortunately, I think Windows apps may still not really support it. I remember trying to switch to it during Y2K, and a lot of programs barfed on this format (giving me an oh-so-useful blank field) even while working on silly formats like d/y/m.

Re:and the other measurements?

[reverseengineer]

We didn't decide to have 360 degrees in a circle. Uh, sure we did. The Babylonians chose 360, not because some intrinsic property of circles suggests division into 360 parts, but merely because it has many integer factors. There's no mathematical reason why decimal divisions couldn't be used. In fact, such a scale already exists- gradians, where a gradian equals 10/9 degrees. A whole circle equals 400 gradians then, making a right angle 100 radians. It's not used very often, since it's a pretty pointless scale- there's no advantage compared with degrees, other than multiples of 10 commonly cropping up. If you want a division based on intrinsic properties of the circle, well, use radians. After several physics courses, they've definitely become my preferred system- I think in radians, and then perhaps convert to degrees if it's called for. For both radians and gradians, conversions are fairly easy- no need for a table, just the ability to multiply fractions. Any other invented system would be just as easy. I could develop a decimal circle system composed of 100 intervals- call them "slashdots." Half a circle would be 50 slashdots, and a right angle (quarter circle) would be 25 slashdots. Makes sense, doesn't it? The slashdot system makes calculations of angles or rotations much larger than one full circle much easier: 9.5 rotations are equal to 3420 degrees, but also 950 slashdots. The only problem with the slashdot circle system is the same one the Babylonians avoided with a 360 degree circle: integer factors. The rather important angle known as 45 degrees or pi/4 radians becomes 12.5 slashdots. Much, much worse, the angle known as 60 degrees or pi/3 radians becomes 16 2/3 slashdots! 360 wasn't chosen because of some special relationship to the circle. Far from it- some of the numbers with intrinsic relationship to the geometry of the circle include transcendentals like pi and e. If the Babylonians couldn't handle fractions, I'd imagine these would be a problem if they had discovered them. 360 was chosen because it is evenly divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12,15,18,20,24,30,36,40,45,60, 72,90,120,180, and 360- no further reason needed.

France tried it

[james_orr]

After the revolution.

The new "de-christianised" calendar started in 1793 and was retroactive to 1792. The year started on September 22nd and consisted of 12 months of 30 days apiece. Each month was divided into decades of 10 days.

The end of the year had 5 days (6 on leap years) designated by roman numerals.

This was France's official calendar until 1806.

I don't think they changed the number of hours in the day though.

Re:The metric system offers no advantages

[Hadlock]

actually, here in texas we call it a 2 litre bottle of soda, and probably elsewhere along the southeast coastline of the US. where i used to live (washington state), we called it pop. minnesota residents call it both soda or pop. sometimes "soda pop".

Re:and the other measurements?

[forged]

Ironically, what you suggest is called the Universal Transverse Mercator [nps.gov] grid, it's already build into all decent GPS models and yes it's based on Metrics.

Re:25 Hours in a day?

[mpe]

But of course inches, feet, yards, miles, pints, quarts and gallons are all old forms of measurement from good ole' ENGLAND.

Except that they arn't the US pint is 95 ml less than the British pint.

The Hives

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hives [hives.nu] has a song called "Introduce The Metric System In Time". I'm totally for it! :)

Re:British Shizophrenia

[fulgan]

It's an example of where we're being dragged (kicking and screaming) into line with the rest of Europe. The metric system is clearly more sensible than the imperial, but was predominantly invented by the French, so we're only changing over very slowly.

Well, if you considere that the deal was that the French wouldn't use the meridian of Paris any more and that the English would switch to metric, I'd say it's about time English pay their debts ;)

Re:I don't like SI

[karm13]

For instance, the meter is bad for measuring height -- most people falling between one and two meters.

but people get bigger all the time! by the time the US finally adjust to the metric system, most people will be two meters tall.
but seriously, the meter works really well for measuring. i've spent my whole life using it, and it works just fine. it really makes no difference what you use in terms of It's a scale that is about right for a lot of measurements.
it's more about compatibility with the rest of the world (yes, there is one outside the US). then, you will notice the advantages in everyday life for yourself. e.g. i hate it when recipes use "cups". now, how much is that? if i have a recipe that uses three cups for two, and i want to cook for eight, it would be twelve cups. i can't imagine twelve cups. if a cup is 150ml, then that would be 1.8 liters which i can imagine easily.

also, i noticed you use miles per gallon for cars. we use liters per 100km. it has some great advantages when you want to calculate your expected travel costs (note: in europe fuel is a cost factor).
just imagine: one liter of water has the mass of about one kilo, it freezes at 0 degrees and cooks at 100. if you put it in a cube, it even will be 10cm high! now, take a ton of water. how much is that? a ton is 1000kg (a megagramm if you like), so would be 1000 liters, or a cube 1 meter high.
i wanted to make the same in your system, but looking at this [french-property.co.uk] i changed my mind.
16 fl oz == one pint. even different from the pint i know (british). 8 pt is one gallon. a little calculating got me 60pt (US) for one "cubic foot". that would be 7.5 gallons.
that page finally made me understand what a yard is. three feet. of course. and one mile is 1760yd...

Square meters are huge.
it's about the size of a square yard. if i tell someone my room is 16 square meters, he/she would have pretty good idea right away. if i hear one hectare, i know it's 10.000 square meters, and i can imagine 100m by 100m. one acre is 4840 sq yd, so its about 70 by 70 yards, or 43.560 sq ft...

and mass... one gram is 1000mg, 1000g is one kg, and 1000kg is one tonne. that sounds a lot easier to me than one ounce being 437.5 grain, one lb 16oz, one stone 14 lb and one cwt 112 lb... that doesn't make _any_ sense.

make your life easier, use metric scales, dammit!

Re:and the other measurements?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as simple as you'd have folks believe. Consider the problem faced by a sailor, out of sight of land, without time reference or electronic aids to navigation-batteries do go dead, and mechanical failures occur at the damnedest times. He can find his latitude easily enough, by measuring the altitude of a celestial object, or the sun. (note that latitude runs from 0 to 90 degrees, and the distance subtended by each degree is constant, 60 miles (remember, a nautical mile is 6080 feet) Longitude is much more difficult without an accurate time mark, though lunar observations can be used in its determination (I have heard of this method but have never seen it used or demonstrated) (note that the distance subtended by each degree of longitude varies from 60 miles at the equator to 0 at the pole) also, at the equator, a minute of longitude equals a mile- amazing how these measurements interlock, and how practical those old timers were.
Finally, given the near impossibility of getting politicians to pass sensible legislation regarding the Net, how likely is it that all the world's leaders will agree to a new system, and where would the arbitrary zero be?
Sailors, ever a traditional and pragmatic bunch, won't give up systems and methods paid for in blood and lives, just because geeks or propellerheads or politicians with way too much time on their hands devise some other scheme that has no practical benefit save being tied to some other measuring system.

Re:Relevant Simpsons quote... (Pedant)

[English_Gentleman]

> Actually, one of the cool things about old English liquid measure ... > 1 pint = 2^4 fl.oz. Hmm, that's odd since my 'English' pint seems to be 20fl.oz (not 16), I better get my measuring jugs recalibrated ... or maybe I won't - I like getting a man sized pint for my beer :-) Next you will be saying that there are not 2240lb to a ton or there is not 14lb to 1 stone. --An Englishman in England