AHC: Decimal Clock becomes standard

kernals12

Banned
You would be able to divide days easily enough, in theory, but the longer periods are problematical. Week days are religiously tied. The month is tied to the Moon while the year is set on how long the Earth goes around the Sun. The first causes religious problems which we don't need. The other two won't change. It will take around 29.5 days from full moon to full moon and it will take around 365.25 days to go around the sun. As such the month and the year are not arbitrary.
I never suggested changing the calendar, just the clock. Although, the French did do a 10 day week for the purpose of removing all religious influences after the revolution.
 

kernals12

Banned
Base 12 and Base 60 are far more easily used than base 10 pre calculator/computer. More factors. Calculators have made us lazy!!
(Yes I AM a grumpy Old Maths Teacher who despairs at present day student's inability to do any calculation without that box of tricks. 2.4 hours equals 2 hours 40 minutes despite them telling you there are 60 minutes in an hour!)
What about the base 10 metric system?
 
I never suggested changing the calendar, just the clock. Although, the French did do a 10 day week for the purpose of removing all religious influences after the revolution.

That didn't last long, did it?

But point taken about the calendar. I should have noticed that you were only talking about units of time in the day.
 
What about the base 10 metric system?
From memory base 10 was not used for measurement on any regular basis until the French decimalised everything (including 100 gradians in a right angle). Base 10 for arithmetic makes sense in that we have 10 digits on two hands, but base 12 makes more sense mathematically (easier fractions as more factors). We think that base 10 makes sense as it is the base for arithmetic. Once computers using on/off come into being, Base 8 or Base 16 make more sense (although Base 2 (Binary) is fun!).
 
From memory base 10 was not used for measurement on any regular basis until the French decimalised everything (including 100 gradians in a right angle). Base 10 for arithmetic makes sense in that we have 10 digits on two hands, but base 12 makes more sense mathematically (easier fractions as more factors). We think that base 10 makes sense as it is the base for arithmetic. Once computers using on/off come into being, Base 8 or Base 16 make more sense (although Base 2 (Binary) is fun!).
Indeed.
Note how many things are often divided into twelve: ounces to a Troy/Tower pound, pounds to a merchant stone, lines to an inch, inches to a foot, pennies to a shilling etc. But the more systemic/standardised systems tended to regular powers of 2 e.g. volume
 
Indeed.
Note how many things are often divided into twelve: ounces to a Troy/Tower pound, pounds to a merchant stone, lines to an inch, inches to a foot, pennies to a shilling etc. But the more systemic/standardised systems tended to regular powers of 2 e.g. volume
16 oz to 1lb, 14 lbs to a stone, 8 stone to a hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to a ton. That doesn't fit!
By the way I am using Imperial measure:)
(I lost a pub quiz once because I automatically said 42 gallons in a barrel, having worked in the oil industry, but that is US gallons (16 fluid ounces to a pint instead of 20), the proper answer is of course 35)
 
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16 oz to 1lb, 14 lbs to a stone, 8 stone to a hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to a ton. That doesn't fit!
By the way I am using Imperial measure:)
(I lost a pub quiz once because I automatically said 42, having worked in the oil industry, but that is US gallons (16 fluid ounces to a pint instead of 20), the proper answer is of course 35)
I was quoting pre imperial common divisions. 8s and 16s also feature at smaller/bigger multiples for obvious reasons.
Amusingly imperial was a way to standardise all the separate systems.
 
I got two things, that I brought up last time someone suggested this, first, there is no reasonable measurement you can come up with in which a day will fit evenly in a year while also being divisible by 10, so either your days lengths would have to vary or year lengths would have to vary making the concept moot unless you have make an exception and have an exception leads into point two. The universe doesn't care what base your measurement system is, the only value of the metric system over the imperial is that it is easier to convert given we also use a base 10 counting system (and even that is not much of an argument if people were taught the imperial system well as the human mind is more than flexible enough to not care about the difference when used properly) it is not inherently better. So if everything did not fit even then there would be no point to switch as its only advantage is gone.
 
Base 10 system is universally used in Mathematics and it is not easy to change that. Base 10 is used in all fields of mathematics while base 12 is used only in the calculation of time. The metric system became popular and was employed by most of the nations on earth due to its simplicity and ease of use. The calculation of time can be split into two parts, one the clock system and the other, the calendar system. The clock system is the division of time for periods shorter than a day, and the other for periods longer than a day. For units of time shorter than a day, the metric system can be employed as described in the earlier posts.
But for units of time longer than a day, the use of metric system could be troublesome. This is because the units like day, week, month and year do not conform to the decimal patterns. Still I think the calendar too can be revised to make it more scientific. The Gregorian Calendar is too complicated and it can be made more simple by introducing certain changes. Many proposals have been put forward by many people in this regard. The symmetry454 is a system that proposes a permanent calendar where every day of the year has a fixed weekday. In this calendar there are no split weeks in a month or year and the week, month and year starts on a fixed weekday.The French Revolutionary Calendar which is similar to the ancient Egyptian Calendar is another proposal.
 
I got two things, that I brought up last time someone suggested this, first, there is no reasonable measurement you can come up with in which a day will fit evenly in a year while also being divisible by 10, so either your days lengths would have to vary or year lengths would have to vary making the concept moot unless you have make an exception and have an exception leads into point two. The universe doesn't care what base your measurement system is, the only value of the metric system over the imperial is that it is easier to convert given we also use a base 10 counting system (and even that is not much of an argument if people were taught the imperial system well as the human mind is more than flexible enough to not care about the difference when used properly) it is not inherently better. So if everything did not fit even then there would be no point to switch as its only advantage is gone.
The OP is talking about dividing the day decimally rather than expanding that to the year.
However the fact that unlike spatial measurements, where it's easy to extend the metre out far, things like seasons and lunar cycles exist does help explain why the metric standard didn't catch on.
Still the International Atomic Time does exist upon which all our clocks are based and it uses a defined second that isn't a fraction of the Earth's spin.
So, dividing the day into a decimal amount is possible. It just needs to be practical enough for adoption by both farmers, industry, and scientists.
86400 seconds per day is close enough to 100000 for our sense of half and full hours to fit across, much like a lot of European countries could restandardise their pounds to half kilograms and pints to half litres.
E.g. 1 day = 1 hectochrone = 100 "chrones", 1 chrone (c14 mins) = 1000 millichrones.
Basically the standard unit needs to be easily relatable to common uses to be accepted.
 
The OP is talking about dividing the day decimally rather than expanding that to the year.
However the fact that unlike spatial measurements, where it's easy to extend the metre out far, things like seasons and lunar cycles exist does help explain why the metric standard didn't catch on.
Still the International Atomic Time does exist upon which all our clocks are based and it uses a defined second that isn't a fraction of the Earth's spin.
So, dividing the day into a decimal amount is possible. It just needs to be practical enough for adoption by both farmers, industry, and scientists.
86400 seconds per day is close enough to 100000 for our sense of half and full hours to fit across, much like a lot of European countries could restandardise their pounds to half kilograms and pints to half litres.
E.g. 1 day = 1 hectochrone = 100 "chrones", 1 chrone (c14 mins) = 1000 millichrones.
Basically the standard unit needs to be easily relatable to common uses to be accepted.
why bother if you are only going to stop at a day though? if the purpose is to standardize, because it doesn't make it any easier, then what is the point if you don't convert all time measurements? (legitimately curious here not sarcasm)
 
why bother if you are only going to stop at a day though? if the purpose is to standardize, because it doesn't make it any easier, then what is the point if you don't convert all time measurements? (legitimately curious here not sarcasm)
As I said earlier the fact that there are day, lunar, and solar cycles, makes it difficult for a single time standard to apply across all.
But not impossible though.
The key is making it acceptable enough.
I suspect decimal time is more useful to urban rather than rural environments.
 

kernals12

Banned
why bother if you are only going to stop at a day though? if the purpose is to standardize, because it doesn't make it any easier, then what is the point if you don't convert all time measurements? (legitimately curious here not sarcasm)
The earth rotates 365 1/4 times each time it goes around the sun, there's no way around that (no pun intended)
 
The metric system can be adopted only for one unit in the Calendar. You can have ten months of 36 days in a year. Then six weeks of six days each in a month. The extra 5/6 days in a year can be added as a leap week to any one month as per convenience. Otherwise you can have weeks of 10 days as in the French Revolutionary Calendar. The months and additional days as in the FRC. But the six day weeks and ten day weeks are likely to be resented on religious basis. The seven day week is important for Semitic religions. Hence I prefer something like symmetry454.
 
Base 10 system is universally used in Mathematics and it is not easy to change that. Base 10 is used in all fields of mathematics while base 12 is used only in the calculation of time.

Time uses a hybrid system - from a second to everything smaller, it is base 10.
 
How else you split it up is neither here nor there, but it is the length of the second that is the deal breaker. Change the length of the second and you lose Meter-Kilogram-Second relations, all your SI units go floppy and all the physics and engineering that used to get done with them gets harder and crunchier; your direct equivalences are gone and it would be as bad, worse, as working in foot- pounds. The second is the key part of the system you absolutely need to keep.

If you're worried about the religious implications, you should be a damn sight more worried about the physics and engineering. For the sake of a dating system for use beyond the planet Earth, orders of magnitude of seconds has been proposed and played with in SF, but it doesn't make much sense when we're all embedded in natural rhythms down here.
 
How else you split it up is neither here nor there, but it is the length of the second that is the deal breaker. Change the length of the second and you lose Meter-Kilogram-Second relations, all your SI units go floppy and all the physics and engineering that used to get done with them gets harder and crunchier; your direct equivalences are gone and it would be as bad, worse, as working in foot- pounds. The second is the key part of the system you absolutely need to keep.

If you're worried about the religious implications, you should be a damn sight more worried about the physics and engineering. For the sake of a dating system for use beyond the planet Earth, orders of magnitude of seconds has been proposed and played with in SF, but it doesn't make much sense when we're all embedded in natural rhythms down here.

One meter is currently defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second. I don't see why that definition can't use a decimal second instead.
 
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