There are many thing I'm interested in, but one in particular is the number of hours in a day. Well. I'm not obsessed with it or anything, but it's always made me wonder how on earth we got everyone on earth to agree to split the day into 24 segments. Splitting the year up into 365 days was easy - everybody knew what a day was, and everybody knew what a year was, so they just counted up how many days there were in a year. This happened all over the world, many times, independently in different cultures. When one group of invaders came along to politely ask another group if they would mind, say, changing their religion, the agressors would say "You've got a day to think about it before we smash you up". It's unlikely these two nations would speak the same language, so this would take a lot of hand waving and pointing at the sun and moon to get across, but across it would nevertheless be gotten. There was no need to go into deep astronomical calculations, because the concept of a day was universal - even newly introduced mortal enemies who didn't have a word or belief in common, would at least have a measurement in common.
But what about hours? Why 24? Why not 10? Why not 60? Time is not naturally split up into 24 anythings, so the division must be totally artificial. After a bit of googling, I found what I thought was the answer:
At which point Bryan crooked his right thumb to touch the base of his right index finger (please follow along and do it, too), and said, in much the same way as a Sumerian might have, 4,000 years ago... "One."
He then moved up a notch - see that? Each of your fingers has three distinct segments. I never really noticed that! - and, touching now the middle segment of his right index finger with his right thumb, he said... "Two."
I think you may sense where this is leading. By the time your right thumb has counted each of the three segments of his neighboring four fingers, you're up to 12.
Long before people were reading with their lips, one imagines, they were counting with their fingers.
So a day was divided into 12 segments, called hours; and, too, the night.
What a lovely story. It was all the ancient Sumerians' fault! The ancient Babylonians inherited this quaint practice, and presumably added their own 60-fetish to divide the hours into 60 minutes, and the minutes into 60 seconds. The Babylonian fascination with the number 60 is interesting in itself - so interesting, in fact, that this page suggests the Babylonians were the ones who split up the day, using geometric series:
... base 12 is more efficient than base 10, as base 10 ignores one of the hand configurations available - to wit:
- Open hand
- One finger folded
- Two fingers folded
- Three fingers folded
- Four fingers folded
- All fingers folded
Clams, naturally, have neither the means nor the necessity for such crude mnemonic devices. As well as being fond of twelve (3 x 4) the Babylonians actually used a base sixty notation (3 x 4 x 5) - hence your hours and minutes. The 360 (3 x 4 x 5 x 6) degrees in a complete revolution also stem back to their childlike fondness for these simple geometric series.
So there's another way of getting the number 12 out of our hands! Even though this explanation comes from the mightily respected "Doctor Clam", who as it happens, is an actual clam, it shows what we probably suspected: these explanations are total guesswork. How are we supposed to know what number a Babylonian saw when he looked at his hand? They don't seem to have written that one down.
Back to Google then. This page here has the world "science" in the URL, but the explanation it gives is still a little shaky:
Division of time into days and hours has gradually changed throughout history. In Babylonia the civil day and astronomical day were different. The civil day was divided up into watches [where] the length of a watch [was] not constant but varied with season. There were four watches during the day - 2 during the day, sunrise to midday and midday to sunset, 2 during the night from sunset to midnight and midnight to sunrise. The number of hours probably came from the use of base 6 as a counting system. It made sense to have each watch lasting 6 hours.
We know that the Babylonians used base 60, not base 6, but they did that because it is easily divisible by lots of other numbers, including 6. So the number 6 may have held a little significance. This explanation boils down to the Babylonians being 60-centric. Is that the real reason then? Did the Sumerians' hands play no part? Perhaps the 12-sectioned hands were a reason for liking base 60 in the first place. Or maybe it was something completely different, as this page suggests. I won't quote the whole thing, as it's quite long. Suffice to say that they've found an astronomical explanation involving stars, and it was the Egyptians, not the Babylonians. It all seems a little convoluted to me, but apparently "significant stages are documented in monuments and tombs" so maybe there's some evidence.
But wait! That's not all! Here we have a slightly different suggestion:
The Babylonians divided the sky into the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and a circle into 360 degrees. They divided the day and night each into 12 hours (although in many time systems the lengths of these varied between summer and winter! Babylon was rather nearer the equator than Liverpool, so they didn't get too confused with this). The hour was split into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds.
Zodiac signs, eh? We're back to the unsubstantiated rumours about Babylon.
None of these solve the problem of getting the whole world to use 24 hours. Did Babylonian (or Egyptian) timekeeping spread naturally across the world in the same way Arabic and Hindu mathematical notation did? Did the Babylonians conquer some rival countries, which went on to conquer others, and so on? Are there, in fact, some countries which still don't use 24 hours? Some isolated island somewhere? Is it just a 'western' concept which has been forced onto the world recently by economic might? Come on! Somebody must know! Sorry for the inconclusive ending... how about I have a guess myself?
I reckon that the Babylonians (or somebody else, but if everyone else gets to blame the Babylonians, I will too) started out with the second as the basic unit of time. It's a nice convenient time interval - if asked to count upwards from one, you'd probably space the numbers about a second apart. Then, using their general love of all things base 60, they must've grouped seconds into groups of 60, and called them minutes. Then, they must've grouped the minutes into groups of 60, and called them hours. Then when they tried to group the hours into a group of 60, they saw that it spanned more than one day. So instead, they stopped naming time intervals, and simply stated that there were 24 hours in a day. Simple as that! It must be true!
If this really was true, they probably started out with something that wasn't quite what we know as a second. Perhaps shorter, perhaps longer. They probably went through the above calculation, and found that there were really 24.145 (or whatever) hours in a day, and to round the number down to exactly 24, they reduced the length of the second. Oh, and the human heart beats roughly once every second when resting, so perhaps that was what they started out with... sadly we'll never know.
Comments
1.) I remember a documentary on the Discovery Channel talking about the 12hr day. Back when mechanical clocks were first were being built the numbers on a 24hr clock was too small and buched up to be read efficienlty. Someone suggested a "12hr" face and that gave us 12AM and 12PM.
2.) Just a thought - Since the earths rotation is slowing down over time, will we adjust seconds accordingly? 500years from now will a second actually be 1sec plus .001?
1) Interesting theory...
2) Doubt it. The modern SI second is defined in terms of some property of Caesium atoms which is unlikely to ever change. They'll probably declare a leap-second to deal with the slowing down of the Earth.
When constructing a sundial, the angle between hours is 15 degrees. 15 degrees is a remarkable easy thing to construct just using a compass. You simply construct an equilateral triangle in the usual way, then split the 60 degree angle twice with the standard construction.
1,000 years from now, when 99.99999% of humanity is off the planet, will we still use the same calendar and clock we use now?
This is an excellent discussion about the basis of our time system. This subject came up during a lunchtime talk today, and I was hoping to find an explanation like this.
The solution may be a mystery but an elegant mystery and there may be something deeper. If one were to look at the face of a clock and go around the clock twice numbering from 1 to 24 a number of things emerge... -note the patern of prime numbers: 1 & 13; 5 & 17; 7 & 19; 11 & 23 -note the squares 1, 4, 9 & 16...4 and 16 overlay one another and is it possible that the relationship of 1, 4, & 9 represent the placement of the prymids? -if you continue the sequence there are 5 prime numbers lined up with the 5 position: 5, 17, 29, 41, 53 Coincidence? Right!
i alway thought that the square root of 360 degrees is 24 and the 360 degrees is the earth circling
The square root of 360 is 18.97.
Why 24 hours, ?
I reckon they took the measure, as the time the moon takes, to move through its own diameter which is about half a degree. Anyone can observe this by watching the moon, against a field of stars.
OK, interesting theory..
I thougt I learnt the question I've ben asking myself and now I'm going to teach the restof my class it.Thanks and how did you find the anwer? Thanks again.
I am just doing a math project so I need scientific information. More important, I need a site that will give me that information. Know of any?
According to Wikipedia:
The day was subdivided sexagesimally, that is by 1/60, by 1/60 of that, by 1/60 of that, etc., to at least six places after the sexagesimal point by the Babylonians after 300 BC, but they did not sexagesimally subdivide smaller units of time. They did not use the hour, but did use a double-hour, a time-degree lasting four of our minutes, and a barleycorn lasting 3⅓ of our seconds (the helek of the modern Hebrew calendar). The Egyptians had subdivided daytime and nighttime into twelve hours each since at least 2000 BC, hence their hours varied seasonally. The Hellenistic astronomers Hipparchus (c. 150 BC) and Ptolemy (c. AD 150) subdivided the day sexagesimally and also used a mean hour (1/24 day), but did not use distinctly named smaller units of time. Instead they used simple fractions of an hour. Medieval astronomers first subdivided the hour sexagesimally in 1200[2] into pars minuta prima (first small part, our modern minute), pars minuta secunda (second small part, our modern second), pars minuta tertia (third small part) and so on.
So it seems we owe the division of the day into 24 hours of sixty minutes of sixty seconds to a combination of ancient Babylonian and Egyptian thought, as well as the intervention of medieval astronomers....
I believe Sumerians took the day to be dawn to dusk, and considered the night to be a different thing altogether, so we are talking about daylight hours. So the question is really "why are there twelve hours in daylight?"(at the equinoxes) The answer is that they picked 12 because they saw twelve months in a year (approx 12 moons). And they liked to have "as above so below" i.e. they liked to see small patterns reflect grand patterns. Hence they wanted the daylight period to be divided like a year so they divided daylight by 12.
i have wondered about this too. ive wondered, since there are not really 24 hours in a day, how much time have we 'lost' or 'gained' over all these years?? wat year is it really?!
it was such nice explanation but there are certain assumpttion
According to Wikipedia: the number of African elephants has tripled in the past fee years. Never listen to Wikipedia. At best, it's just Google scraping. At worst, it's propaganda by governments and corporations. Most often, it's poorly written crap in a nice package.
That wasn't me.
Obviously. lol
This Is Ridiculous
Dimensional/Geometric Reason Why Ancient Egypt Chose 24H/Day:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RhNmlQqQOTw
It probably all goes back to a mix of superstition and geometry. 12 can be divided by the whole numbers 12,1,6,2,4 and 3. 10 can only be divided by 10,1,5 and 2. This makes 12 the more convenient number for thinking in segments. Add to this your zodiacs, gods, apostles and whatnot and Bob's your uncle. In Japan they used to give the hours names, for example "I'll meet you by the well at the hour of the Ox," which possibly came from Chinese zodiac or equivalent. Interesting question though.
Chris is getting closer to the answer. Our earliest ancestors only had three things to determine time. Sun, moon and stars. Many civilizations attribute gods to these entities. The Sunrise and Sunset would be half of this period of time. At night, they would watch the stars. They noticed that after about 360 times that the sun went up and went back down that the stars were in the same place in the sky. They would have also noticed that the moon would appear full 12 times, every 28 1/2 days. Thus, a system is created that is shown in our modern calendar 365 days (Sun/star ratio) 12 months(moon). Don't you also suppose that they would honor the Sun, Moon and stars in the way they calculate time within the day? 60 seconds X 60 minutes = 3600 Sun/Star ratio. Two subsets for day and night (Sun and Moon), and then a way to honor the moon cycles (12) hours. E-mail me if you have any further questions about this.
Hello!
This is the first time I have EVER posted a comment on the internet, and boy am I excited!!!
When you asked, "Are there, in fact, some countries which still don't use 24 hours? Some isolated island somewhere?" I have the answer! Immediately a very interesting story about the Moken people on 60 minutes came to mind. Here it is:
The Moken don't know how old they are. Ivanoff says this is because, "Time is not the same concept as we have. You can't say for instance, 'When.' It doesn't exist in Moken language."
Is there any other word missing from the Moken language? "No goodbye, no hello," says Ivanoff. "That's quite difficult. Imagine after one year, you live with them, and then you go. You go. That's it. Finish."
And, there are no greetings. While 60 Minutes was on a Thai Moken island, a flotilla from Burma dropped by. They didn't seem terribly excited by this. But visits from relatives, and they're all relatives, happen all the time. And since there is no notion of time, it doesn't matter if the last visit was a week ago or five years ago. There's just a constant commingling. And, in the wake of the tsunami, they're all busy now, rebuilding their boats and their lives.
Interesting, eh?
According to some research on other things, I ran across the fact that Jupiter's orbit can be tracked across the sky for most of the year (except when its behind the sun). Jupiters orbit is 11.86 years and for convenience most round to twelve, now in ancient times a moving star in the sky seen most of the time is of great importance, so important that Greeks and Romans bases there God Kings after the planet. They can track the movement of Jupiter and know when it returns to the same position after about twelve years. Hence the twelve year cycles that happen all over the planet. Dividing day and night into such makes sence too because dawn and dusk are very easily measurable points of the day. Twelve of light and twelve of dark.
Kyle
Thanks for all the info on how we ended up with a 24 hr day. But I'm wondering if cultures other than those in Babylonia or Egypt had a completely different system for keeping time during a day. Did the Aztecs, ancient Chinese, or Native Americans divide a day into units? The Aztecs and Chinese had sophisticated calendars, but I can't find any information on whether they had a system for hours.
All very interesting, however, about the whole 12 month thing... most of you DO realize that we only had 10 months on the christian calendar until Julius and Augustus Caeser came around right?
Yeah, and what if it was totally random, had nothing at all to do with math, and it just worked?
Bill, we're talking thousands of years before the Christian calendar. Like Babalon and Egypt and Ancient China and cavemen old. (jk)
Every generation has to learn Everything all over again. To survive, this knowledge has to be easily transferred. Looking at the stars is great for those of leisure. Navigation on the earth is a matter of survival for caravans, armies, sailors, and explorers. Geometry, not astronomy, is the science required to move from place to place on the earth. How do you teach geometry to a simple people with simple tools ? A Stick and a String ! You draw a circle. You divide the circle. You can use it in a boat to find safe harbor, you can use it in the desert to find an oasis. Divide a circle (day/year) by twelve shows an understanding of geometry. Divide a circle by 24 shows a higher understanding. The more different ways you can divide the circle, the better you chances of success. Note for you architects (arc) and engineers, you can also divide the Stick with the String as well as dividing the String with the String. And yes, of course the Stick and String can be used to measure shadows on the ground (time of day/season of year), but it is highly unlikely that early people were that concerned with the time of day, the day of the month, the month of the year, or even the number of the year. Imagine two guys standing in the desert 5000 years ago. One guy turns to the other and says "Do you know what time it is ?" Imagine two guys standing in the desert 5000 years ago. One guy turns to the other and says "Do you know what direction it is ?" What do you think makes more sense ? Astronomy is great fun but it was geometry (GEOmetry) that built the cities, expanded the empires, and mapped the heavens.
hello! interesting question ,i was too thinking about it those days i noticed that the moon travel it's size in the sky in a hour (i believe this is the real reason they chose the hour as such to mesure time) the moon take 29.5 aprox days to turn around the sky (witch is different then turning around earth) in one day the moon travel 12° or one handbreadth and in one hour it makes 0.5° or one little fingerbreadth witch is it's apparent size so to resume it the moon travel in one day 24 times it's apparent size that came to no surprise because the moon is the center of time measurement in ancient times the lunar month was the real month (and it's still used in some lunar calendars) if you want to continue this discussion by emailing me at dummy@mail.com abderdar at yahoo.fr ;)
I was interested in this when I was in school - 35 years back. I found out that all the calculations for time were based on astronomical observations. Indian astrology also evolved from these observations. The heavens were divided into 12 houses (cusps, signs). No "planet" moves 12 houses in 12/24 hours, but the horizon moves through these 12 signs in 12 hours night and 12 hours day making up for 24 hours in a "day".
Actualy, idk how credible your article was, however from my understanding the earth completes a full rotation every 25.something hours. It was rounded off for neatness. To make up for this, an extra day is placed every 4 years or something, the leap year day 29 of February. I don't know the exact thing off the top of my head though, lol
There are 24 hours in a day because we need 8 hours sleep, we need to work 8 hours and then have 8 hours to eat/play/workout/socialize/procreate etc. Simple!
While doing "dimensional analysis" with 8th graders, they became very inquisitive on this topic while converting minutes/seconds/hours/days/etc... Normally, they would have trouble remembering and analyzing what they ate for breakfast! I had never thought about these questions until they kept pounding me for an answer. I knew some of the issues were based on astronomical types of concepts, but never studied the topic in any depth. THANKS for all these postings. It has been fun and informative to read. I will pass on all these theories, assumptions, and facts to inquiring minds. If nothing else, I have been inspired by the fact that my students were thinking "outside the box".
The day should be changed to 48 hours and the week to 14 days.
the Earth completes one rotation about its axis every 24 hours, but it completes one revolution around the Sun every 365 days..hence 24 hrs a day and 365 days a year..
Everyone has different theories, but instead of all these theories floating around they should look for one basic answer. Until the real answer is found everyone is going to keep arguing about who's got a better solution. I'm doing a paper on days and months for school. As a part of my paper I'm digging into different things to make my paper interesting and meet the requirements for a good score. So if someone knows the real answer or is 99.999% close to what the possible real answer is, please let me know.
Guys, have anyone of you ever ask a question of why we change from inches to cm/meters, why we change from pounds to grams/kgs etc?I am suggesting, for the sake of convenient (we change the above make our life easier, aren't we?), we have 10 hours a day, 100 minutes an hour, 100 seconds a minute, 10 months a year, and 35-36 days a month. Challenge are welcome.
While playing around with POV-Ray (a 3D raytracing program), I modeled a simple earth-only solar system using the distance to the sun and the diameter of the earth. Once I got it working, I made a small scene at 30 degrees latitude and oriented the system at the first of the year. As I spun the 'earth' around, I noticed that the sun broke over the horizon at 7:00 am, and set at 5:00 pm. Halfway through the year, it rose at 5:00 am and set at 7:00 pm. At a quarter of the way, and three quarters of the way, it rose at 6:00 am and set at 6:00 pm.
I found it odd that it was rising and setting at these precise times, exactly at hour intervals. Is it possible that the hour was based upon the time difference between sunrises at these significant intervals in the year?
I was interested in this when I was in school - 35 years back. I found out that all the calculations for time were based on astronomical observations. Indian astrology also evolved from these observations. The heavens were divided into 12 houses (cusps, signs). No "planet" moves 12 houses in 12/24 hours, but the horizon moves through these 12 signs in 12 hours night and 12 hours day making up for 24 hours in a "day".
Actually the horizon only moves through the full zodiac or 360 degrees of the compass in 24 hours. This makes sense if you think of the sky as fixed and it would take a full rotation of the earth.
There are roughly 12 cycles of the moon (full to new moon) in a year. (The word "month" is even derived from the word "moon". If you picture the stars as being painted on a huge bowl covering the solar system, every time the moon goes around the earth and is once again directly away from the sun (full moon) the earth is approximately 1/12 the way around the sun. There will be a different constellation of stars behind the moon. There are 12 of these around the horizon: the constellations of the Zodiac. That's how the ancients figured time.
I believe that Babylon actually divided the day into 12 periods. The egyptians gave us the 12 hour day but I've not be convinced as to why other than it was a practical number for dividing up labor.
Clarification: the Babylonians divided the full day into 12, 2 hour segments. The Egyptians divided daylight into 12 periods and night into 12 periods. The length of the periods varied depending on the time of the year thanks to the Earth's tilt.
there aren,t 24 hours in a day there are 23 hours .56 minutes .3seconds
how do you take medication 3 times a day? what are the times?
What if breath time has a thing to do with all of it? 21600 breaths a day, because a breath average time is 4seconds. 21600 = 360 x 60. 1year = 360 days (approx) So 1 degree of time would be 60 breaths. meaning: 60 breaths in 4 minutes. 4 minutes=1 degree of Earth's rotation.
1 hour = 15 * 4 minutes = 900 breaths = 15 * 60 breaths
Now I'm stuck:)
What's with 900 that's so special? ..If it's special, then it would be obvious that they would prefer 24 hours (1 hour = 900 breaths)
But interesting theories anyway.
Great question.
First I will lay out the information I know:
How did it all happen?
1) Defining a day. First, human civilization observed day and night. They defined it as a "sun". One "sun", five "suns" etc. Basically, defining roughly a day.
2) Defining a month Now, they've abserved an astrological phenomenon. A moon phase. So they defined a month. One moon, three months, meaning 3 months. They also observed, that the moon cycle takes 30 suns. So, they derived that a month consists of 30 days.
3) Defining a year. Or why circle has 360 degrees. Ancient scientists were trying to discover arithmetics and astronomy. They started to observe, that it takes roughly 12 moons (+- 1moon) to a) Go back to the same weather b) Get the the same view of the night sky from the same observation point.
So thats the way we have our 360 degree circle :)
Lets summarize: We have defined a day, month(30 days), year(12 months and 360 days), circle(360 degrees)
Now, here come my speculations about hours.
4) Sun clock As far as I know, they used a sun clock. A sun clock is basically a circle.
So we end up with a circle to measurement unit.
The rest is unknown to me.
Actually it is not 24 hours we have in a day...it is 23 hours and 20 minutes. Referring to Joshua 10: 12-13;" O sun, stand still over Gibeon....The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day?....and 2 Kings 20:9-11;"Isaiah answered, This is what the LORD's sign to you that the LORD will do want he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps....."then the LORD made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down...". Since 360 degrees [complete rotation of earth on its axis] represent 24 hours; then 15 degress is equal to 1 hour or 60 minutes; or 1 degree = 4 minutes; for ten steps [degrees]back made by the LORD in that day is equal to 40 minutes....therefore for 1 day we have 24hours-40 minutes= 23 hours and 20 minutes as what the Bible says.
24 hours in aday depend on planet VENUS . VENUS one rotation on its axis =243 earth days and arround the SUN it takes 225 earth days so now start the calculation .
calculation of 24 hours in a day
Venus=shukra=planet name
Venus (one rotation on its own axis) = 243 Earth day
Venus ( one round arround the sun ( orbit )= 225 earth day
243 – 225 = 18
225 x 243 = 54 675
54 675 / 18 = 3 037.5
3 037.5 / 243 = 12.5
3 037.5 / 225 = 13.5
12.5 + 13.5 = 26
26 / 2 = 13
18 x 13 = 234
every next morning on venus will be
234 / 2 = 117 days time of earth
it means one Venus day = 117 earth day aprox.
actual Venus day 54675 / 234 =233.6538
233.6538 / 2 = 116.826 earth days .
18 + 13 = 31
31 / 2 = 15.5
earth one year
365 / 15.5 = 23.5
actual earth year = 365.256 days
365.256 / 15.5 = 23.564
one earth rotation as par nasa 23 hour 56 minut 4 sekend.
but now there are 24 hour in a day
this is not only round off in full hour without aney reason
there are 366 full rotation in 365 days (mornings) apear on earth
so
23 hour 56 minut 4 sekend. x 366 / 365 = 24 hours
so this is the complete calculation of 24 hours in a day .
now if you want to know the Synodic period
234 + 365.254 - 15.5 = 583.754 earth days
thanks a lot for reading my calculation .
you can not find this calculation aney where in the world .if you find let me know about .
Autor: Subodh Kumar Dixit
None of the answers above have a provable, logical, mathematical answer.
Is it then just a fluke that the earth is 24,000 miles in circumference and a day is 24 hours and the speed of rotation is 1,000 mph and 1 day brings the sun's shadow back into approximately the same spot on a sun dial each day?
How did the ancient civilizations know any of these facts?
Frank DiNunzio
How did the ancient ppl use minutes. I haven't seen an ancient sundial with minutes on it before? And if they did use minutes, it would be required to fit in between two hourly pts since the sundial does Not have rotations around the clock until maybe Ben Franklin or someone before him made a modern clock?
Simple. The circumference of the planet is 24,000 miles. It rotates at 1,000 m.p.h. Hence 24hours in a day adjusted every leap-year because the planet is not exactly 24,000 miles round and not spinning exactly at 1,000 m.p.h. Sorted! Hmmmmm....
cause it takes 24 hours for the earth to spin round
I think a day should be 23 hours and 59 minutes 59 seconds. but im sure its wrong
Listen up! There is only one measurement of time that makes sense, and that is the day. Noone ever has problems counting the days, and there is no disagreement about it.
The idiots that say duuuuuuuu we have 24 hrs in a day because that is how long it takes for the earth to spin round, you are MISSING THE POINT. IT IS ABOUT WHAT WE CHOOSE TO CALL IT. There is no such thing as an hour, second, minute... These are human inventions and are ways of dealing with a problem, that works semi-well.
The sensible thing to do is to make a metric clock, with, say, 100 blargnorfs in a smerglin, 100 smerglins in a turdnark, 100 turdnarks in a day (that's right, we should keep this one), 100 days in a remlins, and 100 remlins in a zomglol.
I decided not to use words like seconds and minutes because so many out there don't bloody understand that a minute does not HAVE to be sixty seconds, it can be 5, or 100, or 127.0.0.1 depending on what WE CHOOSE IT TO BE.
So wise up and use the metric clock! No more wasting time on trying to wrap your head around am/pm and bullcrap, just easy metric conversions in your own head!
And change to the metric system god darn it!
Metric units are no less a human invention. They are slightly easier to calculate with, but are still arbitrary. The kilogram is defined to be the mass of a lump of platinum-iridium in a vault in Paris. The second is an arbitrary integral number of cycles of a caesium-133 atom. And the speed of light is a universal constant, so by counting how far light gets in a certain arbitrary number of seconds, you define the meter, which turns out to be a derived unit!
I suspect most angry cheerleading for the metric system is a thin disguise for anti-American braggadocio. If you want to promote a truly fundamental system of weights and measures, try Planck units. Universal constants like G are set to one, so the downside is that since we don't have an accurate measurement of G, quantities like distance become somewhat uncertain! And while we're at it, why not drop the highly anthropocentric base 10 notation and use base 2? Even base 12 is more mathematically justifiable than base 10, due to its abundance. Finally, let's all dump the old, outdated, Anglocentric English language, and switch to something like lambda calculus :)
this is so confusing but inspirational
Some of you are very close but all of you are wrong. This is the true calculation of why there is 24 hours in a day. Time was discovered long before the invention of the first clock. And days were marked by the sun and months were marked by the moon. Time was based on a simple theory to break the days into smaller segments. The smallest being the second. What is a second and how was it first measured? A second is the average of all the numbers a human can count in a full day i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc. From the mark of the first sun to the mark of the second sun a person could count to 1440 using the same speed per number of course. If you were to start counting at the same speed, single digit numbers would of course come out faster than 4 digit numbers however if 100 people started counting at the same time, the average number would be 1440. Back in the beginning days of counting, a parent might say; "You had better have it done by the time I count to 20." Counting was invented well before time was discovered. Hence, 1440 seconds in a day will not divide evenly into 100 because it would give us a 14.4 hour day. 1440 does divide evenly by 12 and 60. This is the only reason we have 24 hours in a day. If we wanted to change it to a 10 hour day then we simply have to count slower to make our seconds slower. Our hours would be longer and the change would drive everyone crazy. Question answered.
isnt it 24 hours not 12
be careful crash the this 24 hour 60 min 60 sec and u might end up changing the speed of light
on the nasa web page it says it takes 23hours 56 min 4.09 sec for the earth to rotate lets take that number and bring it down to see how long a second really is
31558149.45 sec year /365 86460.68342 /24 3602.5284 /60 60.0421 /60 =1.000702354452 thats closer to a real second the whole 24 hour thing will work out evenly with no leap years if u just fix the second
The 12 surely didn't come from months. Christians had 10 for a long time, but that was recent (relatively). Go back to real early times and months were lunar and there were 13 of them in a year. The Chinese races still use the 13 month calendar for just about everything but dealing with the west. Dividing up days and nights into equal bits only works properly on the equator, so the 24 hour day probably didn't come from that either. All measuring devices are ruled out because they were made to suit a pre existing system, be they time candles, sand timers or water clocks. Babylonian is the best answer I've seen so far, but far from a proven fact. Great thread and very interesting concept to play with, as many posters have shown :-)
Anyone who has tried to explain fractions to kids realizes the convenience of being able to say, 1/3 of a day to mean 8 hours instead of 3.3333 hours.
The common factors of 24 being 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 12 is nicer than a number with 2, 5, and 10 as common factors.
This reason also works for explaining 60 minutes, 360 degrees, and 360 seconds.
In the division of a day if the 24hrs wasn’t a correct fact, overtime would we not be left with either a) accumulating minutes and hours or b) fewer minutes and hours from the existing time? How would you account for these more or less “time”? Where are they going or coming from?
Very interesting discussion! I don't think we are any closer to finding a solid answer, but congrats to the original post for keeping a discussion going for 7 years!
the circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles. Roman miles were smaller, 1,000 paces or 5,000 Roman feet - 1,617 yards vs 1,760 yards in our standard mile.
Suffice is to say that our ancient cousins knew geometry and could do the math, having the same brains as us but having no cable access, their measurements had to be based on observable standard units. My cubit is bigger than your cubit and my heart beats faster etc.
12 and 60 base counting systems make sense. Especially to a mathematician living in an agrarian economy. The moon traveling at 12° per day makes a 30 day lunar month. An hour is a comfortable 1/2 a degree. 12/24/30/360/3600 are good to work with and do fit (approximately into things we can observe).
Apart from clean math, the observable are convenient approximations. 60 minutes in an hour divided into 60 seconds makes sense for rough calculation and formulation but has no possibility of standard duplication in measurement without significant technical advancement. We are only able now to give standard measurements for the concept of time we have agreed on.
The year, the month and the day are "natural" in that they relate to the Sun (earth's rotation), the moon , and the earth (spin). Each of which would be the principal terms of reference for any community hence the universality of these units of time. Hours at first glance seem arbitrary, one suggestion given on this forum was that our search for meaning makes us mirror what we see in the bigger picture in our own smaller unit hence the 12 hour division of a day as mirroring the 12month division of the year. This to me seems persuasive,but why should this apparently arbitrary division be so universal?
Let us now turn to theology, the big question which arises naturally after considering the Sun,Moon and Earth is one's own existence and the reason for it. Observing that these bodies rise and set implies that they cannot be the absolute cause "or God" since they are subjected to the natural order and not the cause of it consequently one is left with:
There are No Gods (This is the position of the disbeliever but can also be a starting position of faith)
Except the one true God (This is the position of a believer)
The following of a specific religion that connects faith(the latent "night state") to doing good deeds(the "day state")
The first two steps therefore include everyone believer and non believer as latent states and the latter is a for the awakened soul. These questions are universal to all people and particularly interesting to desert peoples who see unobstructed skies and have time to reflect on the meaning of life.
In Arabic the first two steps "the latent night steps" contain 12 letters and 4 words; 'la ilah ill-Allah'. It is made up of four words, la (no), ilah (that which is worshipped), illa (except) and Allah (the proper name of the Divine Being).
The awakened state accepting that God guides a latent state to an awakened state through prophets who prescribe Prayer and Charity represents religious truth. The declaration of the prophet hood of Muhummad (saw)also contains 12 letters.
It is natural that Islam fits these facts as it is "God who determines night and Day" and Islam is the natural universal religion that your heart directs you to.
To become muslim you say with your tongue and heart 'la ilaha illal lahu Muhammadur rasulullah.'
Incidentally for the mathematically minded among you, Islam seems to be connected with mathematics. There is a common theme of dualism in Islam's holy book the Quran for example "Night and Day", "This Word, the Hereafter", "Odd and Even" etc. Below is a powerful numeric miracle that is easy to verify:
The Quran says "consider the even and the odd". (Chapter 89 : Verse 3)
Now turn to the index of the Quran and write down the Chapters (1,2,3...114) in one column and the number of verses in the chapter (7, 286, 200...6) in another
Then add the two columns, that is add Chapter numbers to the number of Verses in that Chapter so we get 8(1+7), 288(2+286),203(3+200)....120(114+6)
Then separate these numbers into odd and even and add up all the odd numbers and you will get 6555 and add up all the even numbers and you will get 6236.
But also 1+2+3+...114 = 6555 and that 7+286+200+....+6= 6236.
Conclusion: What is remarkable is that one total is exactly equal to the sum of the index numbers and the other is exactly equal to the sum of the verse numbers. It is like having 6555 coins in one bag ,6236 in another bag and then mixing them up and throwing them all in the air only to find that 6555 landed heads and 6236 landed tails!
(For more detail http://www.simetrikkitap.com/binary/binary.html )
Interesting, but I'm also curious to know why we start our days at 12:00 rather than 1:00. I mean, numerically it makes more sense for the clock face to start at 1:00 and end at 12:59 before resetting.
Travis G., see modular arithmetic and zero-based numbering for a likely explanation.
Because the Earth completes a whole rotation in 24 hours and an orbit in 365.25 days.
The day does not start at 12.00, it starts at 00.00, a clock shows 23.59, then 00.00, just like age you don't start at 1, you also start from 0
Here is the response for Kent about how the Aztecs divided the day, they divided the day in a total of 8 intervals with 4 "main divisions" as follows:
1) From midnight to sun rise (ruled by Iquiza Tonatiuh) 2) From sun rise to noon (ruled by Nepantla Tonatiuh) 3) From noon to sunset (ruled by Onaqui Tonatiuh) 4) From sunset to midnight (ruled by Youalnepantla)
Each of these intervals was divided in two, giving a total of 8 divisions, these smaller subdivisions were called Izteotl (here is the god), and they corresponded to three hours of our time.
Hey, You have a great writing style, "but across it would nevertheless be gotten" that's great. It's a good read.
After reading this there are some interesting arguments.
To me however, I see the answer as:
The sun and the moon are both circles in the sky, and to depict a cycle as a year is (the same beginning and end as the seasons) would be done with a circle. The year is split (ish) into 12 lunar months (when observing the moons position using a reference in the sky) so this would have been the representation of the year in a picture. A circle split into 12 segments which when drawn in sand or on a wall wud easily overcome language barriers.
Doing the same with a day would just follow suit, and would help to also explain why a clock is round :-)
Anyways, grats on the (almost) 7 year thread
good ,,, ^_^ i liked
Err, we have two hands right? Thus accounting for the Sumerian 24 segments of aforementioned finger. It's a little known fact that they bleached one hand for night time accuracy.
The end (of time).
I'm finding it interesting that there are also 12 pairs of cranial nerves in the brain. Twelve for each side of the brain. Light and dark sides. Could the outward display of 12 hour ascent of the sun and 12 hour ascent of the moon just mirror the workings of our brain? It's so interestion to try and contemplate the unexplainable. A lot of good explanations that we can wrap ourselves around, though.
Hello All! Chicken and Egg argument, brushing aside the notion of "unexplainable".
Why we use 24 hour days currently: Time, mass, distance, speed, dimensions and all other concepts we have created to deal with the framework of the environment that life on Earth operates within are all arbitrary and probably mostly meaningless nonsense in the scheme of what we assume may be a multiverse. Society and religion, be they ancient societies or belief systems like Christianity and Islam (only 1800 and 1300 years old respectively...recent even in the length of recorded history) are no basis for creating measurement systems that are reproduceable. What we really want to know here is "why are there 24 hours" in a common day. I think the answer is very much the same arbitrary answer as why VHS won over Betamax video tape in the 80's: The most conveniently available technology at that time happened to use that standard! If the Tower of the Winds in Athens or even Big Ben ever promoted a different standard, we would probably use it instead. That is not the reason why for the first clock builders, but precedence is the reason we still use it.
Hours seem to me to be cleanly based on geometry. Astronomical measure enforce this if you look for rationalization, but the understanding of geometry had to come FIRST, before you could do much with the stars. It is quite easy to divide a circle into twelve segments with a compass (or stick and string) by segmenting it by it's radius, then splitting each for half-measures. Sun dials were circles, and base 12 also gives you cardinal points as well as a chance to use your geometry skills to your boss, the King of the Upper and Lower Nile.
Base 60 counting of the human heartbeat (despite historical and individual variability of anatomy, very likely an easily reproducable average standard) easily converts into a usable minimum of time, which if again multiplied by 60 gives you that hour, very neatly in fact. Why 12/24? Egyptians used 10 hour days and nights, with two hours of variable twilight in-between. They were influenced by other cultures, all of whom figured Pi to be about 3.15 (pretty accurate).
The Greeks were heavily influenced by the Egyptians, the Romans (6 watches of 4 hours, miles being fast march 1/4 hour distances etc..) were heavily influenced by Greeks and Egyptians...leading to the Byzantines and eventually the Holy Roman Empire and Europe's 13th century clock towers...and accessibility to the common scum. Simple really. Astronomical stuff never completely provides a satisfactory answer. Simple dirt, stick and string geometry gives us the answer every time. What is the reality behind what we call time...well, I bow out of that discussion.
"It is quite easy to divide a circle into twelve segments with a compass (or stick and string) by segmenting it by it's radius, then splitting each for half-measures"
If I understand you correctly, if you segment a circle by it's radius and then split each segment in half, do you not end up with 16 segments and not 12? This would be base-2 since you keep halving segments.
So why did you split the year into 365 days.
I dissent against this hour idea, even if it divides evenly; or, I dissent against the 60 divisions. What is interesting is that 24 (15), 60 (6), 12 (30), and even 10 (36) all go into 360 (the "convenient" year) evenly.
Science is nothing if people aren't educated enough for it. Why teach children overly complex, silly, anti-fun, and dry systems for accuracy? Doing this is like converting the entire postal system to latitudes and longitudes to an accuracy of 3 places. Society works differently than all of this. We embrace all these complexities to make us unique, and it would be a much easier undertaking to jump on the whole metric bandwagon first. Seriously, 12 inches yet 16 ounces? Bah.
Personally, I'd like to go for base 60 for everything. We just agree to create some other decans for hours that lets us divide by 60. We can also throw away the 5 extra days at the end of a year to scientific use only and celebrate a "scientific" year to make up for everything about every 60 years. So let's assume we want to make this as simple as possible and turn everything into base 60.
Computer application power plus a simple Sharpie on your perpetual calendar will let you know when the scientific milestones should happen, completely in parallel to your new simplified life. This system can easily be translated into any base of your choice including base 2, hex, 12, decimal, or even octal. With even less work you could try for a base degree (360) so you can truly think like a compass; a degree of a day is...?!
Why is it so long
WHY IS THIS ARTICLE HAVE THE LONGEST COMMENTS SECTION I HAVE EVER SEEN BUT IS A GOOD ARTICLE AND IM USING IT FOR AN ASSIGNMENT IM GUNNA ACE
My 9-year-old brother is insisting that because "day" is when the sun is out, there can't possibly be 24 hours in a day because if there were, there would be no night. When I told him that approximately 6,000,000,000 other people in the world all agreed that the day started at midnight and ended about 24 hours later at 11:59 PM, he said firmly, "Well, they're wrong." I told him that 6,000,000,000 people couldn't possibly all be wrong, especially when arguing with the opinion of one 9-year-old boy who just likes to argue with EVERYTHING, but he refuses to believe it, because, "If theh weh twenty foh hou-wahs in the day, theh would be no night." (Yes, he is adorable, even when he is being the single most stubborn and argumentative person on the planet.) I'm not much of a teacher -- I'm better at telling stories -- so how do I explain to him that (OMG HE'LL NEVER BELIEVE IT, HOW IN THE WORLD COULD IT BE TRUE) he's actually WRONG?
In my opinion: An idea of counting time of the day should be a simple division of the whole. The ancient civilizations counting method theory (12 or 60) doesn't make sense to me. If one divides anything (including the time of Earth's rotation) it is simplest and possibly the most accurate way to start with 1/2. Solar, Lunar and day cycles should have their own counts. If one continues with the division by 2 we end with 16, 32 or 64 "H" units a day. A further simple division of one "H" will give us 16, 32 or 64 "M" units for each "H". And further simple division of "M" give us 16, 32 or 64 "S". Now, one can go beyond this and explore how this fits into the solar and lunar cycles. I believe that the instituting the count of 24 hours has other reasons.
There isn't 24 hours in a full day because there's 365 1/4 days in a year so every 4 years it adds up to 4/4 and that equals 1 so that's a whole extra day so they put it there. So that has to effect the hours of a day.
They put it in Feb.
it takes 23 hours 57 mins for the earth to rotate around the sun. But it was rounded up to 24 because it is an easier number. The 3 mins we miss is added up after 4 years it becomes a leap year. the shorter each day becomes will eventually lead to us adding more leap years.
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