What defines a minute? and i dont mean 60 seconds.?

Question

I'm trying to figure out what constitutes a minute, how was the first minute determined? i know that someone did not just count to 60 and say "that's a minute". does anyone know where i could find resources on this topic? or could provide me with a starting point?

thanks so much

Answer 1

This is a very good question and it has to do with ancient cultures (sumerians, babylonians). Many of the traditions that ancient cultures passed down to us arose from their observation of natural phenomenon. One neat thing about our world is that the number twelve comes up in many different places. For example, the moon completes its cycle twelve times in a year. Also, look at the fingers of your hand when your palm is facing you. Now count each of the bones on your four fingers using your thumb. There are twelve of them.

So this gave rise to the base twelve (duodecimal) system. Many things were divided into twelve parts or using numbers with 12 as the base. So a circle was given 360 degrees (kind of arbitrary since you can divide a circle any way you please). Not only is 360 important because it can be divided by twelve, but in a hexadecimal system (base 60), 360 is six times the base.

Imagine the significance that these cultures gave to such numbers as 12, 24 or 360. It seems random to us, but why do we favor 10 year or 100 year anniversaries? Which is a more significant milestone to us our 50th birthday or our 48th? Surely our base 10 system would seem arbitrary to them.

When the night and the day are equal in length (equinox) then for cultures that used based twelve, it made sense to divide the night and day up into 12 parts. So one hour was 1/12th of a day or 1/12th of a night. But when smaller measurements became necessary, other cultures divided the hour up even further into minutes and seconds (or bases of 60).

So a day became 24 hours an hour became 60 minutes and a minute became 60 seconds.

Answer 2

The ancient Babylonians' number system was in base 60, so they kept track of time in groups of 60. The tradition has stuck until modern times.

Somewhere along the way, someone decided that there would be 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. The length of the second (and therefore, the length of the minute) was adjusted to make this schedule fit in one day. Later on, the second was defined as the time it takes for 9,192,631,770 wavelengths of a certain frequency of radiation emitted from a cesium atom to pass by a point.

Answer 3

Actually, The International Bureau of Weights and Measures uses the 60 second definition for the minute and then defines the second according to radioactive transion counts of a Cesium isotope.

Both second and minute have the same primary source too. Minute actually denotes division in classical Latin. The "minute" was the First Division or literally First Minute. The "second" was the Second Division or Second Minute. The 60 base division has older roots in the Babylonian and Akkadian number systems.

Answer 4

A minute is defined as 60seconds a second is defined as the amount of time a Cesium 133 atom vibrates 9,192,631,770 times. sorry that's all i know but wikipedia is good start. Home page is en.wikipedia.org and type in time in the search box

Answer 5

Here is a place to begin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time