Why Time cannot be based on metric system.?

Question

The day and night are divided into 24 hours and hour in 60 minutes and minute in 60seconds.Can these be measured in meric system.And why a minute is equal to 60seconds.?

Answer 1

The second, which is the baisc measure ot time is an MKS unit. It is based on teh number of vibrations a rhubidium atom makes. The division of time into minutes, hours, days, and so forth is more tied to the movement of the Sun and moon. Since the earliest type of time keeping used the shadow cast by the sun, it was natural to think of time as measured by the transit ot the shadow around a circle. A circle has 360 deg. An arc minute is 1/60th of a degree and an arc second is 1/60 of an arc minute. So you have a natural definition of a minute - 60 arc seconds or simply 60 seconds. The SUn moves faster than a degree per hour so the next unit of time breaks down.

Answer 2

They tried it during the French Republic soon after the 1789 Revolution, at the time when they got rid of all the other non-metric stuff. This was in the "year II", i.e 1793.

The day was a total of 10 hours (instead of 24) ie each lasting about 144 of our minutes. Each hour was divided in 100 "decimal minutes", equivalent to 1min26.4secs of our system.

This was abandoned in 1795 already. Whereas the "Republican Calendar", created in 1793, lasted until 1806. (Note that this calendar had 12 months of 30 days each, plus 5 or 6 special days added at the end. And each month was divided into 3 "decades" of 10 days each).

The metric system was so much easier for lengths, volumes, weights, that people never even wanted to go back.

But time? We only rarely do operations with time, multiply, and so on - so the gain to be had from a metric system, is much less than for something like weight where a merchant might weigh things thousands of times a day. And on the other hand, w people being used to knowing what time of the day 4pm would be, there was a big loss in trying to move to a metric day, people losing all their marks.

Also, if I ask you to please divide 3 hours by 10, result 18 minutes, you don't make any money telling me that. Whereas if I ask you to divide 3 kilos by 10, result 0.3 kilos, and I buy 0.3 kilos of cheese from you, you make a profit...


The Sexagesimal system (base 60), dates back to the Sumerian an Babylonian times. Why they chose this we will never know. Specialists believe this was because 60 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30, which makes fractional math much easier in many cases. For example you can split an hour into 2 (30 mins), 3 (20 mins), 4 (15 mins), 5 (12 mins), 6 (10 mins), 10 (6 mins), 12 (5 mins), 15 (4 mins), 20 (3 mins), 30 (2 mins), and of course 60 (1min).

Answer 3

10 hours a day would be too few, 100 would be too many. The French tried a metric calendar (10 days in a week) after the 1789 Revolution, but the working class quickly realized they'd be working 9 days out of 10 instead of 6 days out of 7 and put a quick end to that experiment.

Answer 4

It was actually proposed in the 80's to make 1 minute = 100 seconds, 100 seconds =1 hour and 100 hours = 1 day, but a trial population was not able to adapt to the new system, despite the massive use of amphetamines :-)

Answer 5

There is no metric or English system for time; it's years, days, minutes, and seconds. An apparent solar day (24 hours) is the time between two successive lower culminations of the sun, and a year is the time it takes the earth to make one revolution about the sun. In one apparent solar day, the earth rotates approximately 361 degrees about its axis.

Answer 6

It is of no consequence,time does not exist, it is purely a man man thing, it had to be created in order for man to calculate speed and distance of motion. I have written a five page article on the subject, if you, or anyone else is interested in reading it I will attach it to my reply to your e mail. This format does allow enough space for me to present it here.
[e-mail]
Type, "What is Time?" in the subject box of your e mail.

Answer 7

The unit called TIME is just showing the reference of sun and earth at some and certain place.
Mahesh / MSc / India.

Answer 8

There was once an attempt to implement metric time. It failed miserably.

Answer 9

Metrics is a measure of distance, volume and weight.
There is no provision for measurement of time