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Metric Time

Athenian200

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When I first learned the metric system in school; I wondered why time was left out, and later figured a metric second would be 1/100,000th of a day, or .864 seconds.
What the site in the link did not consider for a prefix for hundred thousandth was "decimilli-". (Though one person argued the SI would never accept that).
My interest was sparked off when I worked the 2000 Census, and saw for the first time the decimalized hour, (where :30 becomes .5; :15 beomes .25, etc), and figured they should go all the way for the whole day.

When I looked it up online, I found the site http://www.decimaltime.hynes.net and joined its forum, but it seems to be down for good now.

I also figured that the week and month could be replaced, but not the year because of the seasons.
The week would be difficult, because we are so used to the 7 day rhythm. How would we even distribute the work days and weekend? Not two days off, eight says on? Longer weekend? Four days off, six days on? Or spread the off says? Like 3/3/4 or something?
And most of the religions would never give up the 7 day week, because that's tied to divine Creation.

But the divisions of the day should be considered.

Hmm... yes, that is true, isn't it? All interesting. I just wish we didn't have to cater to the whims of religious people in the way we measure time. :(

At the very least, the days of the week should be renamed to something that intuitively indicates the order between them outside of route memorization.
 

BlueScreen

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Great, so our time measurement system is an ART FORM rather than the best tool for the job? Intuitive? I really don't see that, to me it's the current time system that seems "unintuitive." :doh:

And of course you're going to end up going back to the normal system eventually... because it's impractical to continually convert it from what other people are using. As long as other people use it, there's no point in trying to use a different system yourself. Things just don't work that way.

Sigh. The fact that "there's A reason" (regardless of whether it's still a very good reason) appears to be enough justification for most people to keep doing things they way they've been doing them rather than try to improve. For instance... I can't imagine a society that used digital/metric time would ever decide to switch to what we use now. But people sure do want to cling to it regardless. And you know why? They have no vision. :dont:

Interestingly, I recently found that the time system I'm thinking of isn't actually new. Apparently during the French revolution, almost exactly the same time system as the one I'm thinking of was implemented, though it never caught on.

The only justification I can usually get is "well, it may work better, but people don't like it." Why do people have to like such... ANNOYING things, anyway?

:). I meant ergonomically. Other ideas for time are great in a scientific sense, but people have to use time to organise their day and plan stuff. The current time system is insanely good and intuitive in this sense. Like the meaningful things we have to set time by on Earth are: day/night, the moon, the seasons, a year. If you look at the numbers involved, the fact we got a system with so much order in it, which doesn't have time of day wandering insanely, or years changing too much, and fits in with the second measurement, moon cycles, etc. The thing is brilliant. Like I'd never discredit it with saying it doesn't work. The reason it has survived so long is because it does. And it is near the most optimal form possible. I also think 7 isn't a bad number for the week. It's a nice length and fits into months well.
 

Lateralus

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Hmm... yes, that is true, isn't it? All interesting. I just wish we didn't have to cater to the whims of religious people in the way we measure time. :(

At the very least, the days of the week should be renamed to something that intuitively indicates the order between them outside of route memorization.
I totally agree with you. Every weekend I shake my fist at the sky, angry that I'm forced to show reverence to an imaginary god.
 

entropie

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I have learned the metric time system too and think its fun.

I am tho a bit oldschool and like science to have some ancients number systems, which are more complicated or more basic to understand, cause I gives Science a bit of a romantic everlasting note.

Keeps you up to speed with the old days and doesnt let you forget where all the things we have today originated from and why they originated to prevent a society to so heavily rely on technology that they even forget how some things were built.

We have an apparatus at university that works in a number system, noone understands or know what it was derived from. So noone can rebuild the apparatus. The apparatus itself is a needle that is steered via a 3-dimensional mechanical axis and that enables you to give you the exact derivation of a mathematical function. It's awesome it even uses the exponential-function
 

Eric B

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At the very least, the days of the week should be renamed to something that intuitively indicates the order between them outside of route memorization.
In Portuguese, apparently they decided to avoid the pagan weekday names. So Sunday is some variation of "Dominis" (Lord's Day) and Saturday is "sabado" (Sabbath), just like all the other Romance languages, and the other days are simply the numbers (2-6) plus their word for "day".

Why not? Just like the other measurements have been metricized?
I say less than the day, because any unit above the day would be too disruptive, as we have been pointing out.
 

Athenian200

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In Portuguese, apparently they decided to avoid the pagan weekday names. So Sunday is some variation of "Dominis" (Lord's Day) and Saturday is "sabado" (Sabbath), just like all the other Romance languages, and the other days are simply the numbers (2-6) plus their word for "day".

Yes, it sounds like the Portuguese got it right. :yes: That would be much easier to keep track of, with the numbers like that. Two days with special names would make sense, and even those are straightforward in meaning.
 

runvardh

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The days of the week in English have more pagan names to them. Sun, Moon, Tyr, Wotan, Thor, Frigg, with the Roman addition of Saturn. I also know that the translations of the days of the week in Japanese is Sun, Moon, Fire, Water, Wood, Gold/Metal, Earth.
 
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