The concept of time..

[V8 Beast]

Ever wonder why 60 seconds is a minute/hour? Minutes are just man made units of time to help schedule and organize. If that the case why not use a number like 50 or 100 since those numbers tend to be easier for the average person to calculate? It takes the earth less than 24 hours to complete a rotation. We also have leap years because the earth takes over 365 days to go around the sun. With the math being flawed to begin with changing it to make it easier to comprehend isnt impossible.

 

/random thought while helping my daughter understand how someone can be timed at 11.98 seconds. "At 60 it's suppose to start over... right?"

[Patterson]

Blame women. It's a fit. It's a rule set forever, and it makes no sense.

[justinwebb]

we are on a spinning rock in nothingness

[Avenger1647545502]

There have been many different ways of measuring the passage of time in intervals smaller than a day...and there will probably be many more. The Romans used a 10-interval "clock" that ran from sunrise to sunset, for instance, which means that their "hours" were a variable length throughout the year...

 

The present intervals were as accurate as could be measured when they were set...the issue is that we can measure MUCH more accurately now, so the previously undetected error is really obvious now.

 

You want some fun, bop around on the net and find just how much trouble defining the concept of "inch" as a measurement has caused...

[AWW$HEEET]

If you think of dimensions of time, how vast outerspace and our galaxy are, it makes you realize how insignificant we are.

[Doc1647545523]

Ever wonder why 60 seconds is a minute/hour? Minutes are just man made units of time to help schedule and organize. If that the case why not use a number like 50 or 100 since those numbers tend to be easier for the average person to calculate? It takes the earth less than 24 hours to complete a rotation. We also have leap years because the earth takes over 365 days to go around the sun. With the math being flawed to begin with changing it to make it easier to comprehend isnt impossible.

 

/random thought while helping my daughter understand how someone can be timed at 11.98 seconds. "At 60 it's suppose to start over... right?"

 

A lot of our conventions come from earlier traditions rather than from what makes the most sense to our modern "advanced" intelligence.

 

From what a remember from college astronomy, the division of time using systems of 12, 24, and 60 derived from very old (as in 20,000 year old) traditions which were passed down to what we now consider ancient times. Pre-historics used the natural world as their reference, and the year (when the sun rises and sets at approximately the same place in the sky) is roughly divisible into the 12 lunar months (12 new moons, 12 full moons, and so forth). The number 12 is also the number of finger joints on one hand. Thus, you can point to a place on one particular finger and indicate any number from 1-12. There are lots of pre-historic counting systems that seem to have picked up this base 12 system. So, if you consider day and night to each have approximately 12 divisions (from your base 12 thinking), you end up with a day with 24 divisions, hence 24 hours.

 

Move forward in time to around 200 or 300 B.C., and you have the ancient Babylonians, who were superb astronomers, who used a sexagesimal system (base 60) in their math instead of our more modern decimal system (base 10). 60 worked well because of its divisibility by so many commonplace (in nature) numbers such as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12. They gave us the tradition of 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour.

 

Why did we keep these "silly" old systems when other ways of dividing time seem more scientific to us? Well, consider how hard it is to get someone who is used to thinking in yards, miles, lbs, tons, acres to start using metric equivalents and I think you'll begin to see that we humans sometimes stick to our old-fashioned ways of thinking, even if better ways come along.

[V8 Beast]

A lot of our conventions come from earlier traditions rather than from what makes the most sense to our modern "advanced" intelligence.

 

From what a remember from college astronomy, the division of time using systems of 12, 24, and 60 derived from very old (as in 20,000 year old) traditions which were passed down to what we now consider ancient times. Pre-historics used the natural world as their reference, and the year (when the sun rises and sets at approximately the same place in the sky) is roughly divisible into the 12 lunar months (12 new moons, 12 full moons, and so forth). The number 12 is also the number of finger joints on one hand. Thus, you can point to a place on one particular finger and indicate any number from 1-12. There are lots of pre-historic counting systems that seem to have picked up this base 12 system. So, if you consider day and night to each have approximately 12 divisions (from your base 12 thinking), you end up with a day with 24 divisions, hence 24 hours.

 

Move forward in time to around 200 or 300 B.C., and you have the ancient Babylonians, who were superb astronomers, who used a sexagesimal system (base 60) in their math instead of our more modern decimal system (base 10). 60 worked well because of its divisibility by so many commonplace (in nature) numbers such as 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12. They gave us the tradition of 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour.

 

Why did we keep these "silly" old systems when other ways of dividing time seem more scientific to us? Well, consider how hard it is to get someone who is used to thinking in yards, miles, lbs, tons, acres to start using metric equivalents and I think you'll begin to see that we humans sometimes stick to our old-fashioned ways of thinking, even if better ways come along.

 

You just proved exactly what I was saying. It's around because its tradition. We are far past counting finger joints. What was common place when this started has been replaced by ages of technology. We do it because its what people are used to not because we dont have better ways to measure it. The millisecond had no place in early times but has been adopted as one of the standards for measuring a second. There are many different callenders that measure seasons and time. We adopted this one because it made the most sense at that time. Its flawed and their is no arguing that. It works for what we need it for, there is also no arguing that. A typical person isnt going to care that the world completed a rotation a few minutes before 12.

 

Quick change/add on of the subject for the thinkers

Lets say someone is in a 20ft long van travelling at 70mph. If they throw a ball from the back to the front, taking .6 seconds to reach the front, how far does the ball travel? Is there just one correct answer?

Edited December 4, 2010 by V8 Beast

[Doc1647545523]

Quick change/add on of the subject for the thinkers

Lets say someone is in a 20ft long van travelling at 70mph. If they throw a ball from the back to the front, taking .6 seconds to reach the front, how far does the ball travel? Is there just one correct answer?

 

It travels 20 feet in the frame of reference of someone within the van.

 

It travels 81.6 feet relative to a point on the road, assuming that the van is travelling forwards in a straight line at 70 mph.

 

(slide rules are ideal for this type of puzzle)

[V8 Beast]

So do you add the numbers together or are the two distances travelled seperate? Edited December 4, 2010 by V8 Beast

[Doc1647545523]

Well, it went 20 feet on the van.

 

The van went 61.6 feet

0.6 sec x 70 miles x 5280 feet x 1 min x 1 hr

..................1 hr......1 mile.....60 secs..60 min

 

Then I added the two together with the assumption that the speed was forward speed (the same direction the ball was thrown)

[V8 Beast]

Damn you're good! The van was going in reverse. A ball appears to be moving forward to the people in the van but to everyone else its going backwards. This basically explains the way my brain works Edited December 4, 2010 by V8 Beast

[Not Brian]

If you think of dimensions of time, how vast outerspace and our galaxy are, it makes you realize how insignificant we are.

 

It didn't take all that outer space shit to make me realize the insignificance of most people..

[Tractor]

American won't even switch over the metric. Good luck with how we measure time.

 

My wife never understood math, but when I showed her how simple metric is she "gets it."

And then wondered why we don't use it. No wonder americans don't look good against a lot of countries test scores. We aren't even studying the same techniques.

[Mowgli1647545497]

No wonder americans don't look good against a lot of countries test scores. We aren't even studying the same techniques.

We led the world for decades in all scientific, engineering, and mathematical areas using these same systems.

 

Its not the systems' fault. Its our post 1970s culture that has devalued science, math, and academic study. Couple that with K-12 math and science teachers that are barely above imbecile in their areas of "expertise" and you have the current recipe for educational backsliding on a grand scale.

 

I am constantly amazed at what 20somethings and 30somethings *don't* know in America. Flabberghasted that they actually graduated.

 

As for the OT - we used hand-me-down systems of measure because the concepts they help illuminate that have to be built generationally are more important than the scale used to measure them in. It all still works.

 

After all, the Space Shuttles' flew wonderfully, and their major design spec was the width of two horses asses. Literally.

[Mensan]

So do you add the numbers together or are the two distances travelled seperate?

 

The answer lies within

[unfunnyryan]

42.

[V8 Beast]

42.

 

[bahd-ler]

Can a jet airplane takeoff it if was on a treadmill?

[macpyro2]

Is a four pound robin fat?

[Avenger1647545502]

What is the unladen airspeed velocity of a swallow?

 

Metric is EASY...

[Doc1647545523]

What is the unladen airspeed velocity of a swallow?

 

Metric is EASY...

 

What do you mean? An African or European swallow?