if theres 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, why not 60 hours in a day?

Answer 1

Why do people who have NO CLUE what the answer is, just make stuff up??

Steven S., you're confusing the length of a mean solar day in sidreal time, with the notion of leap years. We have leap years because a "day" is one rotation of the earth, and a "year" is one orbit of the sun, and it takes about 365.25 days to orbit the sun once.

Hillbillies, where is the logic behind the idea that the number of hours in a day has anything *at all* to do with the number of months in a year?

montazmeahil, at least you gave a good source ... but what you said has nothing to do with the information in that source (e.g. that it is "defined by the bible", or seconds and minutes are "actually derived from distances of light"). Did you even read the wikipedia page you linked?

And on and on. And apparently nobody has heard of Google!

scottopheroy gave a dead-on correct answer ... and a source to support it! (mfem.geo was awfully close, but no source). Kudos!

The rest of you ... *please, please, please* stop answering questions if you don't know the answer, and don't know how to look stuff up! Don't just make stuff up or spread some vague misinformation that you just "heard somewhere." That's how bad information gets around.

Answer 2

because it came from the english system and it makes no sense just like 12 inches in a foot and 3 foot in a yard. A very long time ago, scientist needed to measure a unit time for their experiments and they invented seconds. Then some other guy down the road is working with a longer unit of time. It is unpractical for him to work with seconds since he would be dealing with large numbers. So he invented minutes, hours, and so on. By then seconds, minutes, and hours have been so established that they just had to do the math to fit it in a day.

Answer 3

There are only 12 hours in a day. Likewise, there are 12 hours in a night.

Also, hours were defined before minutes and seconds were so the logic should be, "If there are 12 months in a year and 12 hours in a day and 12 hours in a night, then there should be x minutes in a day, and x seconds in a day."

Now, as defined by the bible a really really long time ago, there are 12 hours in a day. Seconds and minutes are actually derived from distances of light. (weird ain't it?)

Answer 4

our time system came from the babylonians. They started with 12 hours for a night. 60 is a multiple of 12.
The french (late 18 century) tried to introduce a 100 based time( 100 seconds, minutes and hours) it never really gained popularity.

Answer 5

Why not 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour? That will be give us 8.64 hours a day which can be adjusted every so often. It would have made it much easier to calculate. After all time is man made.

Answer 6

Look at inches, feet, yards and miles. The same trouble.
By the way 1 second = 60 tertsies

Answer 7

Because I'm not gonna work 40 hours and sleep 20 hours a day. That's just nuts.

Answer 8

Because they are based on different number systems. We gain our 60-based system from the Sumerian system of counting. They used the knuckles on their fingers to count. We get our 24 hour system by the Babylonians, who built it on th Sumerian system.

Answer 9

Just under 24 hours is how long it take the Earth to make one full rotation- thus one day.

Answer 10

because thats just the way it is, although in actuality there arent 24 hous in a day either, its actually 23.56 hours, which is why every 4 years theres a leap year