Why do we have 24 hours in a day? Ten would have been better?

Question

No doubt the goverment will decimalize time soon anyway,one more excuse for the train to be late

Sesshomar - we have 23 hours 56 mins 4.091 secs losing 4 mins each day with respect to the stars. I am an amature astronomer

Answer 1

You are in breach of the Official secrets Act my friend.
Bloke in our office left a EU draft policy "Change for Time" in the photocopier and from 2020, EU time will indeed be 10 hour per day commencing half way between "Midnight" and "Mid day" Paris time, the Meridian Eifell, using the Eifell Tower rather than the Greenwich observatory as its datum. The working day can thus be aligned with the TV schedules with the day commencing at a time similar to the present 6 am and the night ending at a similar time to take into account also the longer drinking hour.
Plans to move to a 10 day week have stalled, Christian objections having been bypassed by threatening to apply Uniform Business Rates with no releif to Church buildings if they do not quit whinging, but officials have been unable to find 10 heroic frenchmen or women after whom to name the new weekdays.
The decision to move to 10 day months and 10 month years awaits the report of the EU Draft consulataion "Time for Time Change" "The Ramifications of Change" whilst the creation of an EU watch and clock mountain so that each citizen can be issued with a new timepiece and satellite surveillance tracker and ID card continues apace, using money from the EU spare money which everyone has forgotten about fund, The savings through allowing accident victims to die, and closing all UK SW region hospitals and sending all Patients to a centre for excellence in Mumbai should balance the EU budget.

Answer 2

Well, since we designate them as two sets of 12 hours (i.e., am and pm), we should be looking at what is special about 12. Remember, astronomy developed from astrology, and that was the reason so many of the ancients were interested in the (apparent) motion of the stars, moon, sun, etc.

12 was a special number, there are 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 gods of Olympus, etc. all of which probably derive from 12 moons in a year (approximately). 12 is also divisible by 3 and 4, which has numerological importance as well (3 has a beginning, middle, and end; I forget what the importance of 4 is, but it was). 12 also conveniently divides into 60, a number the ancients thought was a nice round number and was also important (hence 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute). The whole thing really boils down to numerology.

Answer 3

It was a convenient approach to breaking up watches in the night: six shifts -- two hours each; four shifts -- three hours each; three shifts -- four hours each; and so on.

Twelve hour nights and twelve hour days = 24 hours.

In order to add divisibilty by 5, you would need 60 which is why you use that number for minutes and seconds.

Before decimal notation became popular, everything was expressed as fractions. This is a remnant of that era. When the metric system was introduced following the French Revolution, attempts at metric time failed dismally.

Answer 4

no one has actually answered this question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#Origin_of_the_seven-day_week

the twenty-four hour day is a consequence of the ancient babylonian religion. it is not anything natural. some 2600 years ago, the babylonians worshiped seven "deities": sun, moon, mars, jupiter, mercury, venus, and saturn. these were the known planets at the time. the babyloians chose to divide the day into 24 equal time periods. they chose 24 because it is divisible by a lot of smaller numbers.

the seven day week is also a consequence of this choice. the babylonians dedicated each hour to one deity in order of its speed across the sky. it happens that the first hour of each day is therefore dedicated to a different deity and that day was named for that deity. the first day of the week is sunday (sun day, if you wish). the second day is monday (moon day), if you know the names of the next few days in french or spanish then you will recognize that tuesday (mardi, martes) is named for mars, wednsday (jeudi, jueves) is named for jupiter, thursday (mercredi, miércoles) is named for mercury, and friday (vendredi, viernes) is named for venus. the last day of the week is saturday (saturn day).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration#Historical_evidence

the length of the day is actually getting longer because tidal effect of the moon. 620 000 000 years ago, the day was only about 22 hours long so there were about 400 days in a year.

Answer 5

We do not have 24 hours in a day we have 23 hours 58 minutes and 47 seconds

Answer 6

Heck no theres not eough hours in the day as it is I'm the mother of 4 children and 2 elderly parents to look after If its cut to 10 hours aday where does my yahoo time go lol

Answer 7

It all because of the sundial.

The Romans inherited the 24 hour day (in the double-12 form) from the Egyptians, via the Greeks: 12 hours of daylight, followed by 12 hours of night, with hours of variable length depending on the time of year. They started counting from sunrise (hour 1 = Prima), so hour 3 (Tertia) was mid-morning, hour 6 (Sexta) was midday, and hour 9 (None) was mid afternoon.

http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/time.html

is a good site to visit

Answer 8

Our time is based on the mean solar day which is exacly 24 hours or 86,400 seconds if you wanted to you could base it on one sidereal day wich is shorter it has 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.

Answer 9

good question. I'd like to think it was purely science and math that made it 24. however, think about all the unhappy bosses and spouses that would only have 10 hours to micro manage your life. 24 gives them double 10 with 4 extra to cover for their poor management skills.

ha ha... well, i found the link below that may help.

Answer 10

In Canada we have moved to the 25 hour day.