For example,
60 seconds = 1 minute
60 minutes = 1 hour
24 hours = 1 day
7 day = 1 week
29-31 days = Month (approx.)
365/366 days = year
It’s like for the imperial measurement of distance, where 1 mile = 5280 feet…
Edit: just to clarify, I’m more or less keen towards any consistent, decimal-based measurement systems like base-10 or base-12.
The only metric unit of time is the second. all the other ones are customary units that are geared towards living on Planet Earth. There was a movement for decimal time at one point, but it never really took off. Given that the length of a day changes, I don’t see how it would remain stable either. Which is something that SI units try very hard to make sure doesn’t happen.
Americans use the imperial system, yet claim not to be imperialist. Curious 🤔
12 hours in half a day is fine for me. 12 can be divided into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths. That’s useful for planning out a day. Time is one of the applications where I don’t have a complaint about using base 12.
I think the 12 months thing is more due to the cycle of the moon being about 12 per year right?
we eat captured solar energy and rely on tides & animal behavior which is connected to lunar cycles, the sun and the moon are what our efforts to measure time are hinged on at the macro level. the biggest problem is that the sun and moon do not sync up neatly in their movements. there are solar calendars and lunar calendars and attempts to merge them are difficult mathematically.
for example:
Since each lunation is approximately 29+1⁄2 days, it is common for the months of a lunar calendar to alternate between 29 and 30 days. Since the period of 12 such lunations, a lunar year, is 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 34 seconds (354.36707 days), purely lunar calendars are 11 to 12 days shorter than the solar year. In purely lunar calendars, which do not make use of intercalation, the lunar months cycle through all the seasons of a solar year over the course of a 33–34 lunar-year cycle.
Well, the time for eath rotation isnt a constant, it will slowly decelerate and days will be longer.
Using multiples of 10 for time was considered, but was a shitty option compared to the current deal. Months should all be 30 days and then have a free week at the end of the year tho, egyptian style.
Splitting hours and minutes into base 60 started with the Sumarians like 5000 years ago, passed down to the Babylonians, and just kind of stuck around. 60 is great because it has a bunch of factors - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60 - so it’s easy to split up into even parts. Apparently it’s called Sexagesimal
A year being ~365.25 days long is simply how many times the Earth spins on its axis during a full orbit around the sun, because the Universe does not give a shit about being neat and orderly. Months and weeks are just figuring out how to manage it the best we can. Kinda dumb that February has 28/29 days though, like there’s a bunch of months with 31 days stop hogging them all and let February have a couple more, assholes.
