Showerthoughts

29325 readers

1 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

Rules

All posts must be showerthoughts
The entire showerthought must be in the title
Posts must be original/unique
Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

119

Why do we use base 60 for time and base 10 for everything else. Why has no one decided to integrate it. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Thought of this in the shower this morning, if anyone has an answer I'd be very interested!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

As you said there is really nothing special about 10 and you could easily redefine prefixes to whatever base you want.

In base 12 a day has 20 hours, an hour has 50 minutes and a week has 120 hours. The numbers are as arbitrary as before. Except the 0th index is always 0 in these cases.

While the origin has been explained well, a base change really doesn't solve the underlying problem with time as we define it. I don't think this has a good solution and probably doesn't need one.