this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
944 points (96.3% liked)

Science Memes

11047 readers
3349 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (10 children)

I hate the idea of metric time (for a lot of use cases metric is still awesome).

12 and 60 can be easily divided by 2, 3, 4, 6. 60 also by 5 and 10. Even for 8 it's still kind of easy.

For 10 or 100 division is easy for 2, 5 and 10 and okay-ish for 4.

The 12/60 (and 360 degrees of a circle) are such an elegant system!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (5 children)

We should "just" switch to base-6 (or maybe 12) first

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

AFAIK the system goes back to the old Babylonians who had a base-60 system subdivided into 5 times 12. 5 times 12 could easily be counted using your thumb to count the 12 knuckles on the other fingers and the 5 fingers of the other hand.

I mean, how amazing is counting like that! I only learned to count to 10 with my fingers. I love the base-10 for its simplicity but base-60, subbase-12 is the shit :D

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Even easier and more comfortable - count the pads instead of the knuckles. You can count to 12 with one hand, or 144 with two

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You are right! English is not my first language and I thought I was talking about the pads. My bad! Yours is the best way!

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)