Has anyone ever seriously proposed such a system ? I would envisage a day made up of ten metric hours and each hour having 100 metric minutes. Would it work?
2006-09-18 10:55:24 · 10 answers · asked by Daddymac 2 in Education & Reference ➔ Trivia
Of course it could work, hours, minutes and seconds are an invention of man, not a natural phenomenon, so we could fit them into the day any way we liked. But it would cost a lot of money to change over, upset all the old ladies, and wouldn't be worth it.
The reason we have sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute is because Mathematicians and Scientists used base 60 fractions before decimals were invented. This number was first used by the Babylonians for their Astronomical calculations, which is why degrees are split up in the same way as the hours.
2006-09-18 11:12:10 · answer #1 · answered by hi_patia 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The metric day is totally possible, and has been proposed before by many people, but has never been seriously considered.
There is no reason why a day has to be 24 hours, although a month does have to be about 28 days and a year has to be about 365 days.
2006-09-18 11:01:18 · answer #2 · answered by CANAILLE 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, because our time is based on the 360 degrees of a circle and the ecliptic path of the sun. The earth circles the sun, the earth is a globe, and turns circular on its own axis, as does the moon. Round is best. Round is 360 deg.
Geocentrically, the sun moves almost exactly one degree per day, so that after one year it's back where it started - fits the 360 degree circle much better than it would the decimal system.
60 seconds = 1 minute, 60 minutes = 1 hour,
60 seconds = 1 minute, 60 minutes = 1 degree.
2006-09-18 11:23:04 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
It is feasible, it could work, but there's not enough purpose to it.
At the same time, you would have to metricate the longitude system of navigation, which (I believe) is accepted worldwide. To get that to work you would need significant global support, and I don't think you'll get it.
What would be the advantage?
In the imperial system, you can count to 144 on your fingers, but with the metric system you can only count to 10.
Is that progress?
2006-09-18 10:58:36 · answer #4 · answered by Hairyloon 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's been tried before; In the fifties some factories divided the hour into 100 units, to make it easy to count the time worked on staff 'clock-in' cards.
2006-09-18 11:06:11 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
No way. I wouldn't fancy the 40 hour working week
2006-09-18 11:13:30 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - the first line of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
2006-09-18 22:36:09 · answer #7 · answered by James 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is feasible, it could work, but there's not enough porpoise to it.
2006-09-18 10:59:35 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
No reason why it couldn't.
2006-09-18 11:03:27 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
NO
2006-09-21 11:46:55 · answer #10 · answered by cathyjast 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋