this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Comradeship // Freechat

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For example,

60 seconds = 1 minute

60 minutes = 1 hour

24 hours = 1 day

7 day = 1 week

29-31 days = Month (approx.)

365/366 days = year

It's like for the imperial measurement of distance, where 1 mile = 5280 feet...

Edit: just to clarify, I'm more or less keen towards any consistent, decimal-based measurement systems like base-10 or base-12.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Time measurements like heat, mass, length etc are arbitrary units. It is just that they are the oldest.

The Sumerians gave us our time standards and they loved base 12. So twelve hours in the day and 60 (5x12) minutes in the hour. Also 12 months in a year and 360 degrees in a circle.

The French actually tried to implement decimal time after the revolution but reverted back after 6 years or so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

TL;DR: mostly ancient math and moon stuff.

This article suggests 60/60 came from the Sumerians who used a base-12 counting system. This and other articles note that 60 is more flexible than 100 in many ways as it’s divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

The Babylonians invented the 360 degree circle, and so understood the sun to move about 1 degree per day.

The number of days in a week and weeks in a month is based on lunar phases (month=moon, and in Chinese the word for month is the same as moon, 月). This article says the approximately 28 day month is traced to ancient Mesopotamia with leap days used to stay consistent in the long run. As for days of the week that article also says they were based on the 7 non-fixed heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And when you are studying financial mathematics, there 30 days months all around, or not actually each day is counted, or wait it's only work days. For the year you can have 360 days at year, or 365 or sometimes 366. And you need to remember all that shit for tbe exams and never use it again because is the problem for the programmers to solve.

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

And there are some calendars (the old UK electricity EFA calendar for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Forward_Agreement) that have months which are 4, 5 and sometimes 6 weeks (445445445445/6). An absolute nightmare.