Why are there 60 secs in a min and 60 mins in an hour?

Answer 1

What we are using at present is called 'decimal
notation' which takes each ten as one unit. In ancient
times, the laymen in villages could not use counts of
ten; they used counts of each six as one unit. One
system which was intended to take the advantages of
both these methods was 'sexagesimal notaion'. It was
used not only in the divisions of time, but also in
division of angles, and positioning methods for air,
land, and sea navigation.

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Arithmetic
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.bases.html
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/galien8/sexagesimal/sexagesimal.html
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Sexagesimal scale

Mr. Amit! You are a Hindu I think. The number 60 is sacred
to Hindus. Have you not heard the word Shashti Poorthi?

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Answer 2

Ok, this has to do with spherical trigonometry, so tighten your thinking caps and open your ears real wide. In a circle there are 360 degrees and to each degree there are 60 minutes and to each minute there are 60 seconds. The earth orbits around the sun in 365.25 days (the .25 days is why we have a leap year every four years). Now as to why this is revelant to the question at hand: The earth has a grid system that allows for navigation, latitude and longitude. Latitude is stationary and is dependent on where you are located above or below the equator, and the lines of latitude are always the same distance apart. However, for the lines of longitude, the distance between them starts at zero (at the north and south poles) and then gets widest at where the lines of longitude cross the equator. Now the Earth is covered by 24 different times zones, because there are 24 hours in the standard diurnal anomaly we call a day. So, the distance between each line of longitude is one hour's difference. Now the way you determine your latitude is done by comparing local time with the time difference of where the Standard Prime Meridian is currently at. This is done, generally by using a sun clock and then comparing that with a hyper accurate clock called a chronometer. So, because we have the necessity of convention due to a convergence of navigation and time telling, this is why we have 24 hours to a day, 60 minutes to a hour, 60 seconds to a minute. Hope that had totally confused you and caused your brain to explode. Remember, truth is stranger than reality.

Answer 3

It's from the first civilization, Mesopotamia. They devoloped a mathematical system based on 60. It's also why a circle has 360 degrees.

Answer 4

God is the Greatest. The humans are yet to frame an arithmetic to calculate the
year'. 365, 366, leap day, millenium day ...! If a year is incalculable, so is the 'day'... and its division into hours, minutes, seconds. The present calculation is the best the human could work out.

Answer 5

This is a simple " QUESTION " .
Its difficult to reply it ---but I will try .

Its basicaly a circle . Time taken by EARTH to rotate its own ,
Time taken by EARTH to take a CIRCLE of SUN .
When Human being desided / tried to make a WATCH , he thougdt of
units of time ( comprising SUN RISE & SUN SET etc.).Then they
distributed factors in Seconds / Minutes / Hours / Days / Weeks /Year etc .
By this mathoud We can predict time of diffrent activities ie. SUN RISE / Aclips etc.
So its simply a breackup ie. 60 secs . in a min. & 60 mins in a hour etc. etc .

Answer 6

Because some idiot wanted it to be this way. Why does it matter anyway? At least every day is 24 hours long. Enjoy every second of it.

Answer 7

wish i could help but I will stay posted and see if anybody has a better answer

Answer 8

I guess someone counted them, and that's how many there were.



(...Sorry, I couldn't help myself)

Answer 9

dude there just are.

Answer 10

WHY NOT?