this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Damn, that's interesting!

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A Different Way of Measuring Time: Metric Time (metric-time.com)
submitted 4 months ago by original_reader@lemm.ee to c/damnthatsinteresting@lemmy.ml
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What do you think?

You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time

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[–] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

The advantage of 12 and 60 is that they're extremely easy to divide into smaller chunks. 12 can be divided into halves, thirds, and fourths easily. 60 can be divided into halves, thirds, fourths, and fifths. So ya, 10 isn't a great unit for time.

[–] AceSLive@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand how its any easier than using 100 and dividing...

1/2 an hour is 30 min 1/2 an hour if metric used 100 is 50 min

1/4 an hour is 15 min 1/4 an hour metric is 25 min

Any lower than that and they both get tricky..

1/8 an hour is 7.5 min 1/8 an hour metric is 12.5 min

Getting used to metric time would be an impossible thing to implement worldwide I reckon, but I struggle to understand how its any less simple than the 60 min hour we have and the 24 hour day...

[–] SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

And 1/3 of 100 is 33.3333333333333. There are strong arguments for a base 12 number system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal), and some folks have already put together a base 12 metric system for it. 10 is really quite arbitrary if you think about it. I mean we only use it because humans have 10 fingers, and it's only divisible by 5 and 2.

That said, the best argument for sticking with base 10 metric is that it's well established. And base 10 time would make things more consistent, even if it has some trade offs.

[–] LordGimp@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

Ancient central Americans used a base 12 number system and counted on their fingers using finger segments (3 per finger, 4 fingers, 12 segments). Makes fractions way more intuitive

[–] the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

I will always up vote base12 superiority posts

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago

My vote is power-of-two based. Everything should be binary. It is divided up so much easier and counting is better.